Stationed at the front of a mockup of a new 787 airplane cabin, Megan Smith, a Boeing safety instructor, was demonstrating how to open the exit door, activate the emergency slide and get passengers out of the plane in a hurry. Simulated flames flickered outside the cabin windows. Smith, a former flight attendant for Alaska Airlines, heaved open the door and shouted evacuation orders to imaginary passengers, her arms directing the way as assertively as a New York traffic officer's. 'Leave everything! Come this way! Exit here! You, stay at the bottom, help the people! Exit here! Jump! Jump!' she yelled. I could imagine a cabin of anxious passengers complying exactly as ordered. She was asked to repeat this exercise several times so a television reporter could get himself reacting on video. Because I found this amusing, I was then asked if I would like to try to run the drill myself. Sure. Taking my place by the exit door, which I struggled to get open, I hollered: 'Yo, people! Get out now! This way out! Jump! You, pal, get a move on! Leave everything behind! Anybody I see bringing a carry-on with them goes down this slide head-first! Move it, people!' OK, so I don't have a future in the exciting fields of cabin safety or in-flight service. Still, it was edifying to experience firsthand some of the training procedures that Boeing is conducting at its sprawling Customer Experience Center here to show how it is preparing to put its much-delayed 787 Dreamliner airplane into service. The 787, like the double-deck A380 that Boeing's rival, Airbus, brought to the market three years ago, is a plane aimed at the future of air travel, where international flights and expanding global airline alliances are expected to drive industry growth for years. Both planes are remarkable flying machines. The superjumbo A380s now flying are mostly configured comfortably, with 500 to 550 seats in a three-class cabin arrangement, but an A380 can actually carry about 900 passengers in a single-class cabin. The 787s, on the other hand, will carry 210 to 290 passengers. Both planes are aimed at the nonstop long-haul market. Boeing promotes the 787's agility (it can serve airports not big enough for the A380), and the extra fuel efficiency and passenger comfort it offers, compared with older commercial airplanes, because of its light carbon-fiber composite construction. But while about 30 of the 234 Airbus A380s that have been ordered are already plying the skies with various international airlines, the Boeing 787 is still more than two years behind schedule. Last Friday, a day after I visited the Boeing complex here, Boeing said that because of some problems with the Rolls-Royce engines, the first delivery of a 787 (for which the company has almost 850 orders) would be delayed again -- from this December to the middle of the first quarter of 2011. Boeing has set up a worldwide network of centers to train the 787's pilots, flight crews and mechanics, including one in Renton. Pilots, including some who will switch from, say, a long-haul Boeing 777 to the new 787, train first in a mock cockpit built around a flat-panel display system that simulates flying. That system also reduces the amount of time a pilot needs to spend in a so-called full-flight simulator. The real fun, though, comes in the full-flight simulator -- an amazing contraption that costs many millions of dollars and resembles giant lunar-landing vehicles. Inside, pilots train in an exact cockpit replica, while elaborate technological and hydraulic systems reproduce the reality of flight. Lifelike visual displays mimic certain airports, skies and locales, and the actual motion and feel of an airplane in all aspects of flight. Boeing has a building full of full-flight simulators, including the new one for the 787. A gaggle of reporters crowded inside the 787 simulator last Thursday as a Boeing pilot, Gregg Pointon, prepared the mock cockpit for flight. The simulated Seattle airport through the window looked exactly like the real thing, and even the simulated taxiing felt real, though the actual motion simulation was kept turned off, for safety reasons. Pointon snapped shut his seat belt and said, 'We are now ready for takeoff.' Well, the 787 isn't quite ready for takeoff. But soon, Boeing insists, soon. 