Bao Bao Leaves DC Zoo, Loaded Onto 777 Dubbed 'Panda Express' (Photos)

WASHINGTON, DC — It's official: Bao Bao has left the D.C. zoo, and on Tuesday afternoon she was successfully loaded onto a FedEx 777 aircraft at Dulles International Airport after a trip across Northern Virginia on the Dulles Toll Road.

The Panda Express, as the aircraft is being called, will take Bao Bao to China three and a half years after she was born at the National Zoo. She is part of a collaborative breeding program between the United States and China that stipulates that pandas born in D.C. are sent back to China by the time they reach 4 years of age. Bao Bao was born in August 2013.

Local news stations broadcast footage of the truck carrying Bao Bao driving down the Dulles Toll Road and finally arriving at her plane. At 1:28 p.m., ABC 7's Richard Reeve posted footage on Twitter of Bao Bao being loaded into the plane that would take her back to her homeland.

Caretakers will be on hand to make sure Bao Bao's 8,000-mile journey is a comfortable one. Zookeepers put Bao Bao in a steel crate specially made for the trip on Tuesday morning. The staff will feed her bamboo and leafeater biscuits, according to a Washington Post report.

The plane will land in Chengdu, and Bao Bao will be taken to Dujiangyan Panda Base, where she will live for 30 days to make sure she has no diseases, the report adds. She will join the panda breeding program when she turns 5 in August 2018.

There goes Bao Bao! Loaded into the 777 playing that will take her to China pic.twitter.com/V6PLPOc1dg
— Richard Reeve (@abc7Richard) February 21, 2017

Bao Bao is flying to China. Fellow passengers include a bunch of tiny toy pandas, safely strapped in https://t.co/BD35YDByzV #ByeByeBaoBao pic.twitter.com/vrb36HAIeX
— CNN (@CNN) February 21, 2017

Image via MWAA Police Department