HackerTubewatch
Surprise me
Frame from 21st Century Jet - Building the Boeing 777 - Full Episode 1 Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

21st Century Jet - Building the Boeing 777 - Full Episode 1

shareoldvideos
Documentaries
YouTube
1 HN user recommended this documentary1 month2014–2021 score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Cited in threads on Boeing and engineering management as a long, interesting look at how a modern airliner was built.

The first episode of the 1996 PBS documentary series on the creation of the Boeing 777. It follows the design, build and certification process, including meetings with subcontractors.

“PBS did an interesting, long documentary filming the build and certification process for the 777.” (HN, 2014)

1 recommendations · 2 citations · Documentaries

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@rlease Aug 2014 Recommends
on HN thread Boeing Flies on 99% Ada
PBS did an interesting, long documentary filming the build and certification process for the 777. It's broken into 5 different, hour long parts that can be found on Youtube ( [this video] - First part). The last part goes into detail about what they did to meet FAA regulations in a short amount of time.
Long PBS documentary on building and certifying the 777.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@sgnelson Sep 2019 Cites it
on HN thread Boeing's Managerial Revolution Created the 737 Max Disaster
Read more
The PBS documentary is linked in the above article: [this video] with this quote: "There is a scene in the first episode of a five-part 1996 PBS series on the making of the 777, Boeing’s first plane to employ “fly-by-wire” technology, in which an engineer discusses the company’s philosophy of computer-assisted aviation: One of the things that we do in the basic design is the pilot always has the ultimate authority of control. There’s no computer on the airplane that he cannot override, or turn off if the ultimate comes, but, in terms of any of our features, even those that are built to prevent the airplane from stalling, which is the lowest speed you can fly and beyond which you would lose the control. We don’t inhibit that totally; we make it difficult, but if something in the box should inappropriately think that it’s stalling when it isn’t, the pilot can say, this is wrong and he can override it. That’s a fundamental difference in philosophy that we have versus some of the competition.
Episode shows Boeing's philosophy of pilot authority over computers.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Search
j k
Next / previous video
r
Surprise me
l
Like (video page)
w
Watch later (video page)
?
This help
Esc
Close