Originally Posted by notabob

And when the time does come, I believe the most likely candidate to replace the 744 would be the 77W. By then, Boeing may even have an NG version available. 350-1000 is also being touted as a potential replacement, and while it's possible UA could convert some of the 359 orders to 351k - the 351k, while getting pretty close, just doesn't quite compare to a 77W, especially when you take the latter's much greater cargo capacity (and resulting additional revenue opportunities) into account.