Boeing is a Seattle company... well, sort of, since they're outsourcing everything and moving all their manufacturing either overseas or to South Carolina (non-union plants). Seattleites still think they're a local company, and as such, follow the new 787 ("Dreamliner") very closely.
It's about to make some test flights, and so today's Seattle Times explains
exactly what sort of tests they do on new commercial airliners, anyway. It's pretty impressive. I, for one, am going to be a lot less nervous flying from now on.