ALAN PEAT BRINGING RED faces to our journalistic team, FTW has been embarrassingly caught out by a most amazingly plausible Internet info hoax that had Boeing flying a mega-jumbo that exists only in the imagination of a number of cyber-writers. We even had a very cleverly-created “artist’s impression” photograph of the monstrous “blended wing”, 1 000-seater super-plane to further fool us. But hoax it is, according to Boeing’s SA-based communication man, Johann Pheiffer. And not a new one, he told FTW, but one that originated on an Internet pop-sci site about four years ago when Airbus first launched plans for its own super-jumbo, the A380 – but at least that one is taking to the air. In this case, FTW got caught in the turbulence of the imaginary “Boeing 797” take-off in about 2010, according to the newtechspy.com website where the story re-emerged in its latest form – and joined a large number of other publications around the world who were caught out by the writers’ very authoritative-sounding piece. Possibly a gang of students playing a cyber-joke or someone in business looking to stir things, Pheiffer suggested – but with the original source fading further-and-further into electronic space. There’s not even a hint of it on Boeing’s drawing boards, he said, and we’re not ever going to see it flying the skies.
