United’s 787 International Flights

I recently got a chance to fly on the Airbus 380. It was on a Lufthansa operated flight from Johannesburg to Frankfurt (JNB-FRA). Flying the Boeing 787 is next on my list, and has been there for a long time. I missed a chance last year to fly one from London to Newark (LHR-EWR), as the timing did not work. As I primarily fly United, I have been looking at United’s 787 routes to make sure I do not miss out on an opportunity to fly one if I happen to be flying one of those routes.

Unfortunately for me, United does not fly any 787s out of my home hub – Washington Dulles (IAD) or from my nearby hubs – Newark (EWR) and Chicago (ORD). As the 787 is designed for ‘long thin routes’, it is being primarily used on such for routes out of Houston (IAH), Denver (DEN), San Francisco (SFO) and Los Angeles (LAX). There too on low traffic (thin) routes, or routes that have other flights also, operated with larger aircraft. Interestingly, the Los Angeles – Melbourne (LAX-MEL) route is the longest 787-9 series route operated by any airline.

Attached is a picture showing all the International routes operated by United with a 787. These include mostly 787-8, with LAX-MEL and LAX-PVG (Shanghai) operated by the longer 787-9 planes. United is taking delivery of more 787-9s, so I expect some of these routes to get replaced with those, and new routes added. (Picture created using gcmap.com).

Hope to fly one of these soon and report on this blog.