United’s New 787-9: Freshly Painted and Nearly Ready to Fly Non-Stop to Melbourne

I’m a fan of the Boeing 787, it’s early teething problems notwithstanding. And I’m looking forward to the routes it opens up. United is flying non-stop to Melbourne. British Airways is flying to Austin.

There will be plenty of secondary cities that get non-stop service, and I think it will be ultimately disruptive of a lot of models since it will divert traffic away from existing hub flights.

United’s first 787-9 with a longer fuselage, greater seating capacity, and additional range has gotten its paint job up at Boeing.

This is the plane type they’ll be using to launch Melbourne, Australia service.

United already operates 10 Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners, on which it seats 219 passengers. With its fuselage stretched by 20 feet, the 787-9 will be configured with 252 seats, including 48 in BusinessFirst and 204 in economy. Of the economy seats, 88 will be EconomyPlus with added legroom.

British Airways has big plans for their 787-9s, since those will feature a first class cabin.

Meanwhile, Air New Zealand which was first in line and expects to fly the aircraft Auckland – Shanghai, has it painted in a striking black.

(HT: Milepoint)


About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. Nice post. I would question Air NZ on the black. Seems like it could get really hot sitting on a tarmac during a delay at a warm weather location. Also seems like it would show wear marks easy. It’s like a black car, it looks great when it’s new and clean. Maybe they’ll put up big tents to park under at the airport.

  2. How have the black AirNZ B773 and A320 stood up so far? All I know is that they look awesome compared to all that Euro white nonsense. Brings back memories of the days of Braniff!

Comments are closed.