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.

UAL's oldest 777's, the A's, have 364 seats. The new 300ER's are 366. The A's are a candidate to be replaced in the net 5 years or so. 1994 is the oldest.

So, the 787-10, not really a replacement for the A's. Unless you put in cattle car seating like the A's. 10 across in back. Sardine anyone?

Why do we care?

People are buying the cheapest seats possible and if that keeps making money so be it. Remember those profit sharing checks the last couple of years and then compare that's to the previous decade when United was a "premium" airline.

Exactly. People shop purely by price, followed in a distant second by schedule. Go to any travel website, search for flights, and tell me how they're ranked. I don't see seat width/pitch/cabin configuration as a metric for sorting the options.

If indeed the -10 will have 318 seats, that is a cattle car since the 787-9 has 252 seats. Either way that is a huge increase in seats for international for whatever it's designed to replace.

So latest category summary (aug 22) reflecting the just awarded vacancy shows 30 Captains and 73 F/O's.

If it’s sorted to the top as cheapest, they’ll buy it.