This Air France 787 takes center stage in a breathtakingly beautiful aviation film that highlights the beauty of modern widebody flight.
Few things lend themselves to beautiful cinematography quite like aviation.
Metal, light, motion, and altitude all come together when filming an airplane against the open sky. When captured well, it can look almost unreal. Every now and then, a film reminds us just how stunning modern flight is.
This Air France Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner video is one of those films.
This is pure aviation eye candy, with slow, cinematic air-to-air shots and light hitting the fuselage perfectly, set to a beautiful soundtrack. The Dreamliner’s wing flex is unmistakable. It feels more like a carefully crafted tribute to long-haul flying than a marketing video.
And the airplane at the center of it deserves the spotlight.
Air France currently operates ten Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners. Deliveries began in November 2016 and wrapped up in 2020, with the first aircraft entering service in January 2017. Today, the fleet averages about 7.8 years old. Each jet carries 279 passengers in a three-class configuration: 30 lie-flat Business seats in a 1-2-1 layout, 21 Premium Economy, and 228 in Economy.
Under those sculpted nacelles sit General Electric GEnx engines, powering the type across medium- and long-haul routes to North America, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.
The 787-9 plays a key role in Air France’s long-haul modernization, replacing older jets and working alongside the larger Airbus A350s and Boeing 777s. It’s a workhorse, but in this video, it becomes art.
If you’ve seen Air France’s recent videos, this won’t surprise you. Earlier this year, they released a beautiful tribute to Concorde for its 50th anniversary, which was full of nostalgia. This Dreamliner film feels different. It’s calm, intentional, and confident.
And if you want to go down the rabbit hole, do not miss the “Air France ATHOS A350” video:
In this film, the Airbus A350 flies with the Patrouille de France, the precision aerobatic team of the French Air and Space Force. The Patrouille, flying Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jets in tight formation, joins the A350 in an aerial ballet to celebrate Air France’s 90th anniversary and the team’s 70th. The coordination is so impressive it might make your palms sweat just watching. The result on screen is extraordinary.
Both productions come from Airborne Films, a Paris-based aerial cinematography company whose work you have almost certainly seen. They have filmed for Airbus, Boeing, and Air France, but also for Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Disney, Apple TV+, and Netflix. If you watched Masters of the Air or Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, you’ve already seen what they can do. It is worth taking a look at the rest of their work.
So here’s the simple takeaway.
If you’ve got a few quiet minutes today, give yourself the gift of pressing play. Turn the volume up. Watch it on the biggest screen you can find. And let yourself enjoy it.
There’s no agenda or headline here – just great airplanes, great lighting, and a team that knows how to capture both.
