lenscap

Interesting article by Brian Sumers at Aviation Daily, though not surprising:

United May Retrofit Some 777s With 10 Seats Across
http://aviationweek.com/mro/united-m...0-seats-across

"The new configuration would allow United to install 364 seats on each aircraft, nearly 100 more than the airline has on many of its three-class 777s, a person familiar with the matter said."

JVPhoto

Aside from no such thing as PE on UA...

I'm assuming these would be the Hawaiian planes that have the loungers in F? Makes sense I guess to update J and pack Y.

If they do put 9 in y+ and 10 in y gives good incentive to stop poachers.

COSPILOT

The author IMO misspoke, as UA has the Hawaii 772's, the 3 cabin 772's from PMUA, and the 2 cabin International 772's from PMCO. It seems he ignored the 2 cabin 772's in his article.

QBK

From the article: "the source said the aircraft would come from airline's United subsidiary -- rather than Continental -- and would be limited to aircraft with lower maximum takeoff weights." Then, in the next paragraph, the article discusses the two distinct PMUA configs (without mentioning anything about the PMCO config). I agree that it's not as clear as it should be, but if we take the second paragraph to be about sUA, then it's consistent.

However, there's no good excuse for (a) "premium economy", or (b) saying that the 3-class 777s are "often deployed on short routes between the East Coast and Europe." Yeah, it's technically true, but it is highly misleading -- those aircraft are used extensively for 10-15 hour TPACs too.

eng3

maybe they'll install slim-line seats too in their race to the bottom.

The only good thing I could see come out of this is replacing the pmUA biz seats with pmCO ones. Although I know people have their favorites.

I'm guessing they came to the reduced number of 26 biz seats by subtracting the average number of GPU and award upgrades.

kevanyalowitz

So would these come from the Hawaii pmUA 777s?

LASUA1K

New Hawaii Config! Not going to like it.

Yes, Hawaii config getting this. Isn't ORD-HNL at limit right now? Adding seats would affect its range.

I have an idea, keep some 747's for Hawaii. Replace BF seats with Y.

REPUBLIC757

So is it confirmed that the 9 Hawaiian ones are getting this upgrade?

Perhaps they realized it was a massive fail of an update (wifi/streaming problems, dated F seats) and want to actually provide something decent?

I wonder if these planes will get AVOD?

coolbeans202

I don't have a huge problem with this if there really are going to be 98ish seats in E+ that will remain 9 across.

The article made it sound to me like they might be going after the 772-A's,what with the comments about low MTOW planes and the Hawaii 777's having recently been refurbished.

Edit: Also the Hawaii 777's are already at 344(ish) seats, they are really going to go through all this trouble for 20 extra seats?

scottpenderson

Doubtful, considering their push for personal device entertainment. The fact that UA is taking delivery of dark 739ERs, gives me little hope that they will retrofit a dark plane to include AVOD(assuming the Hawaii planes are receiving the retrofit and I still consider wifi stream to be dark).

ReporterBrian

Hi all. Thanks so much for linking to my article in Aviation Week. Thanks also for pointing out what appears to be an editing error. The story was not as clear as it could have been, and we've made a slight change to the link.

Just to clarify. As far as I understand, the only aircraft under consideration for the new configuration are legacy United 777s with low maximum takeoff weights, meaning they are not capable of flying particularly long routes. As I mentioned, United essentially has two versions of this range-limited aircraft.

I am told former Continental aircraft would not be touched, nor would legacy United aircraft that fly longer routes, such as to Asia.

Kacee

According to the UA Fleet Website, UA has nineten 777-222s (non-ER) (United Mainline Fleet). Nine of these are in the Hawaii configuration, the remaining ten are IPTE. Presumably it's the latter that UA is considering converting to an HD configuration.

LASUA1K

So you are saying just the 777 that do Europe? I've heard it's the 9 Hawaii birds only.

REPUBLIC757

If so, pathetic. I would think they would use these on routes other than Hawaii so hopefully they would get the international aircraft premium AVOD treatment. Also to install lie flat J seats with no AVOD would be cheap.

kevanyalowitz

Ugh. I wonder if those GF seats and B'F' seats are moving the 773s?