United is giving up on 10 new 787-9s like this one it had ordered. (Photo: Jeffrey S./Flickr)
In announcing its quarterly results last week, United Airlines revealed plans to make some major changes in the makeup of its fleet.
For starters, the airline will swap out an existing order with Boeing for 10 787-9 Dreamliners to 10 777-300ERs instead. United also said it will extend the lifespan of 21 767-300s that had been slated for retirement by adding winglets to them to save fuel; those aircraft will replace some 757s on medium-haul international routes. As nice as a new 777 is, they don’t come with those nice big Dreamliner windows and curvy wings.
Related: Flying on a shiny new United Boeing 787 Dreamliner
Also, 10 of United’s existing 777-200s will be pulled off international service and overhauled to fly regularly scheduled domestic routes — something you don’t see very often with twin-aisle aircraft. (That’s good news for domestic flyers– wider is almost always better.)
And like its rivals, United will continue to pull 50-seat jets out of its United Express fleet — 130 of them by the end of this year — as the industry trend to larger regional jets continues.
ALSO…According to Airlineroute.net, which tracks planned changes in airlines’ route networks, United will switch from single-aisle 757s to twin-aisle 767s on four Europe routes out of Newark, including Berlin starting in June, and Hamburg, Madrid and Barcelona effective October 25 …
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Nope. All UA 772s are currently 3-3-3. 3-4-3 is considerably worse (very narrow seats).
Thanks, my error … United is upgrading international 757 routes to 767. Maybe it’s because of my vantage point, but putting an existing 772 on a route to Berlin in the summer would be a no brainer, then use the 767 domestically instead.
The flip side of this fleet change might be reduced flight frequency. I often take the late flight ORD-YUL and if that route were upgraded to a 737, it could be twice a day rather than four RJ’s a day. Unless going to a mainline bird opens up new opportunities at 3X per day or current 4X per day schedule.
Isn’t this already the case? That means 2/3rd of the aircraft will not need renovations (unless they reduce the legroom … oh, right!). How much economy space they will add after getting rid of the international first class section and putting in domestic first class (i.e., business), I’m curious!
When per-merger United flew 757’s PDX-ORD (or vice-versa), a free upgrade was a no-brainer if there were any problems affecting earlier flights. Or like when AA was punished in 2007 by the FAA after a corruption scandal by its inspectors at SWA’s maintenance facility. (Yes, that’s right, AA …)
What will happen is the 773s they are getting will replace 772s that are running long routes out of EWR. The ones currently running long routes like EWR-DEL/BOM/HKG then get freed up to replace the 10 short range 772s that will be used for domestic.
So no net loss in international widebodies, and in fact an increase in international capacity because of the larger 773s.
Thanks for the tip, J. I will ask United about seating configs on these planes…. –chris
I’ve also seen this posted around – if true, this does not make for “good news for domestic flyers”.
I’ve heard rumors that some UA 772s will be reconfigured with 3-4-3 (extremely dense) seating in economy. Chris, do you have any confirmations on this?
If this is true, then the 772s will be a rather subpar experience for most, even compared to 737s.
United did a good job renovating its 772’s after the UA-CO merger … probably the only good thing to say after getting the 787’s originally ordered by CO. United has been using 757’s for domestic transcon, for ps and Hawaii (PDX seems to be an unofficial hub to/from HI) and if those are being phased out, I wonder why not use 767’s to replace them? I can’t see downgrading overseas routes from 772’s to 767’s especially in the summer unless (n.b., this is not political) United management believes we are entering a recession after a long, long, long recovery …