There's a lot of interesting stuff going on lately. And what with Farnborough and summer vacation, it's been a challenge to catch up. But let's begin with the re-launch of a very cool Website.

You may have visited newairplane.com before, but you might want to check it out again. We've added some cutting-edge, interactive technology to this Website.

This is a screen shot of the newairplane.com home page.

The new look is intended to reflect the breakthrough experience of the Dreamliner. You can take a kind of video tour of the airplane, and learn about some of the key features of the 787. The Website also remains home for the "World Design Team" - a community of 160,000 airplane enthusiasts - which helped choose the Dreamliner name back in 2003. Take a look at the new site here.

I've also got a couple of other 787 items from this summer to share. In June you may have heard that Aeromexico will become the first Latin American airline to operate 787 Dreamliners. International Lease Finance Corp. (ILFC) will be providing Aeromexico three 787s, with deliveries scheduled for early 2010.

Aeromexico took delivery earlier this year of two 777-200ERs. So this goes along with what we've been saying about the great twin-aisle combination of the 777 and 787.

Aeromexico will operate three 787s, bringing breakthrough passenger comfort and operating efficiencies to Latin America and beyond.

Of course, these airplanes will give Aeromexico long-range, point to point capability. But on top of that, they provide the flexibility to meet changing demands.

And the story continues. As of this week, the Dreamliner has 411 orders and commitments from 30 customers around the world.

I've also been meaning to share with you a very interesting piece from a while back in USA Today by pilot/columnist Meryl Getline. Meryl took part in a 787 "media summit" here in Seattle. She got to visit the Boeing Customer Experience Center where we house the 787 mockup. And it seems as if she came away quite impressed, particularly with how comfortable the cabin is going to "feel" to the passenger - and flight crew. You can read her column here and there's also a link within the piece to her extensive photo gallery.

Finally, I want to share one more update on the Dreamliner. Several weeks ago we saw the start of major assembly for the first 787 Dreamliner, with the joining of pieces of the center wing section at Fuji Heavy Industries' new factory in Handa, Japan, near Nagoya.

A scene from the media tour stop at KHI in Japan - this is the autoclave, a pressurizing oven where composite 787 fuselage sections are cured and hardened.

Indeed, our 787 partners around the world are beginning major assembly work now. So in mid-June we flew about a dozen journalists to facilities in South Carolina, Italy, and Japan. There they got an in-depth tour of some of the sites where the groundbreaking process of building Dreamliners is underway. You can follow the links above to read some very good articles about the tour.

It was an opportunity for reporters to see first-hand the global industrialization and coordination coming together for the 787 program. And I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about this innovative production system as we progress toward final assembly of the first Dreamliner next year.

I read something recently that really got me thinking: "The 787 is the first commercial jetliner of the 2^nd century of powered flight." In so many ways this airplane is new and revolutionary. And I do think it holds the promise of not only changing the way we build airplanes, and changing how we travel, but also how we as passengers perceive the experience of flying.

The Dreamliner really will open a new chapter in the history of aviation. I'm glad I'll be around to see it all happen.