Boeing plane over Powell Saturday A new Boeing 747-8 flew over Powell around 10 a.m. Saturday, garnering plenty of surprise — but the plane was simply testing equipment. Some folks thought the aircraft was coming in for a landing.Gary Parham was at a Powell Middle School football game, when his son, Eric Parham said, “‘Look at that!'”

“And here is this gigantic airplane,” Gary Parham said.

Its landing gear was down. It was moving slow, Gary Parham said.

The craft turned toward Polecat Bench.

The main runway at Powell Municipal Airport is 6,000 feet long. In a pinch, a 747 could initiate an emergency landing.

“It could be done if conditions were just right,” said Tom Bibbey, a pilot who sits on the Powell Municipal Airport Advisory Commission. “It would have to be really precise.”

“I was expecting to see a big ball of fire over the Bench,” Gary Parham said.

Then, abruptly, the 747-8 turned to the north, toward Billings, he said.

“It flew over my house,” said rural resident Anna Paris. The craft flew slow and low over the Bench and then gained altitude, Paris said, recalling her thoughts: “Everything is OK.”

Orville Moore, Powell Municipal Airport manager, said Boeing was testing the plane's ground avoidance radar.

“That is what all the excitement was,” he said.

The plane flew out of Glasgow Industrial Airport in Montana, where Boeing has a testing facility, Moore said.

“They notified me two hours before,” Moore said.

Moore received a telephone call from Boeing, but he was en route to Gillette from Powell and couldn't check his cellular phone messages until later, he said.

Powell Police received lots of calls from concerned citizens, but Boeing did not notify police of the flight, said the dispatcher on duty.

Boeing called the Powell airport about 10 minutes before the 747-8 quad-jet passed over, Moore said.

“Any (air) traffic in the area would have known he was out there,” Moore said.

The Federal Aviation Administration granted the aircraft permission to fly at a low altitude, Moore said.

Moore said the 747-8 passed over the airport about 200 feet above the Bench, but he said did not know its altitude over Powell.

“What you guys saw was the freighter,” said Tim Bader communications manager for Boeing 747s. “It's a brand new airplane.”

Boeing will begin delivering the $300 million freight aircraft to customers in mid 2011, and its passenger version in late 2011, Bader said.