Originally Posted by daron4000

"We will announce 2014 international flying changes Saturday
Over the past several months, Network Planning worked with all of our operating divisions to develop United’s 2014 international flying plan. We will load the schedule into our system on Aug. 17. The new schedule reflects our ongoing work to put the right aircraft in the right markets to earn a sufficient return, which includes the addition of SFO-KIX (Osaka, Japan) Boeing 787 service.
First, we are moving some of our Boeing 747 flying back to ORD. Last year we decided to move all of this flying to SFO to improve the reliability of this fleet. Now that reliability has been restored, and we have a plan in place to better support the fleet, we can put the 747 on the routes that are better suited for the number of passengers the 747 carries. We will return the 747s to ORD and fly three routes: ORD-PVG (Shanghai), ORD-NRT and ORD-FRA (Frankfurt, Germany). We are matching those routes with 747s out of SFO to PVG, NRT and FRA; this route structure will continue to allow SFO maintenance to be the primary maintenance location and improve fleet profitability.
“We carefully selected these routes to generate the best performance from both a profitability and a reliability perspective,” said International Planning Managing Director Andrew Buchanan. “Our Tech Ops team did an outstanding job bringing this fleet back into an ongoing maintenance mode and are making the necessary investments to operate the aircraft reliably out of Chicago. We feel confident about moving some of them around the system carefully and selectively.”
We will also use 777s instead of 747s in the LAX-SYD (Sydney) and SFO-SYD markets and on the SFO-LHR (London-Heathrow) route. We’ll also replace a 777 with a 747 on the NRT-HNL (Honolulu) and SFO-NRT routes.
In addition to the 777 and 747 swaps, we’re also replacing a 747 with 787 service from SFO-KIX beginning April 8. “While SFO-KIX is a successful route for us, the load factor on the 777 is relatively low, so using the smaller, more efficient 787 there will improve results while allowing us to redeploy the 777 to routes with higher demand,” Andrew said.
With all of these decisions, we intend to better align capacity and operational cost of the aircraft to the amount of profitable demand in those markets.
“It’s important to keep in mind that demand and profitable demand can look very different,” Andrew said. “Our airline is a business, and businesses need to make money. We believe these changes will help us achieve a greater level of profitability for our airline, which in turn benefits our co-workers and all of our stakeholders.”