As some of you will know a United 787 was chartered for the Star MegaDo, and has been doing some domestic runs. Well today, United Airlines commences its international 787 operations with segments between Los Angeles and Tokyo Narita.
However, there is a down side it seems according to Flight due to reliability issues with the new 787’s.
Services from Houston-IAH to London Heathrow, Amsterdam and Lagos all delayed for differing periods of time.
Meanwhile, the following services have been confirmed to be operating from their original start dates:
- 30th March 2013 – Los Angeles and Shanghai Pudong
- 31st March 2013 – Denver and Tokyo Narita
United have experienced some problems with their 787’s, one of which suffered a fault in flight requiring it to be taken out of service for a short while. It seems this incident has now impacted on United 787 international schedule.
United currently has six Boeing 787’s in its fleet (all the -8 variety) configured with
- 36 United BusinessFirst configured as 2-2-2
- 72 United Economy Plus configured as 3-3-3
- 111 United Economy seats configured as 3-3-3
hasn’t ANA been having some problems with their 787s also?
I believe so (ANA run Rolls Royce Engines). I also belive Qatar Airways have had major issues with their 787s too (who use the GE engines – like United).
A lot of growing pains for the 787 still.
Sounds like the 787 planes are getting further testing with passengers being the guinea pigs.
I was on an ANA 787 from NRT-SEA a few days ago. Good flight except for the water dripping on us from the vents during takeoff and landing. I have a picture of the “fix” the FA’s worked out (towels taped to the vents).
Less of an issue than UA but not fun for us.
If you are flying on United, avoid the 787 in economy at all costs – they’ve squeezed an extra column of seats in, making all the seats unusually narrow.
Alas NB, most of the carriers have elected to go to 3-3-3 down the back on the 787.
Hmm. The Squeezeliner. That sounds like a good article name….