Dca 787
 

Anyone have any sense of how large this base will be? How many pilots?

I bet neither the 787 fleet Mgr, the marketing director, nor the grand Poobah himself, could answer that question with clarity.


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4 routes for now/2018

Approximately 20 Captains and 70 F/O's.

I'll will bet that as the -10s come on line they will be used out of IAD for Europe flying because they don't have the range of the -9 or -8.

The west coast will keep the 14+ hour legs.

West coast to Europe is well within the -10's range. It can also do the closer Asian cities from the west coast. You are right though, I bet you see them in IAD a lot.

The 10 will do Western Europe from SFO, but might have some trouble going much farther east, and even Western Europe might have some problems in the Winter with strong westerly winds. Same as the 763. It is a 12-13 hour airplane.

A couple times I did ORD-Germany in the 763 with 200+ knot westerly winds. 8 hours outbound, 12 hours back. It was about the limit of the 763 to make it back.

The 10 will do it most of the time.

I don't know the specs on the -10, but the 767-300's limit is about CDG-SFO. E is no problem, W you can be weight restricted. That's just shy of 12 hours.

When we were doing CDG to LAX in the 763, we were going over 12 hrs (while scheduled at 11:55) often enough that the FAA was getting annoyed with us.

While some of the 787-10 (we have 14 left on order after various conversions) may make their living in IAD, I doubt they will be replacements for the 767-300 despite its similar range (Boeing gives it at~6400nm). It will be a huge capacity increase as it's 18 feet longer then a 787-9, so more likely a 777 replacement with somewhere around 280-290 seats.

So it depends if the company feels they can fill those extra seats out of IAD, and if they have a need for those 777's elsewhere in the system.

Of course the plan today won't be the plan tomorrow.

United 787-10 will have 318 seats.