Boeing’s latest airplane model, the 787 Dreamliner, finally got off the ground on its maiden flight on December 15, about two years after the program first began to experience delays. Its maiden flight was at the company’s Everett Paine airstrip in Washington state.

The 787 is set to replace the company’s aging 767 and 757 lines and is an innovator in many ways. The 25,000 people who gathered in Everett to watch it lift off said over and over again that it was truly historic that an airliner built almost completely out of composite materials, plastics and the like, should finally be airborne.

Excitement hung in the air much like it did for the Concorde’s final flight all those years ago. The runway was dotted on either side with fire trucks and other emergency response facilities.

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