Originally Posted by
Flying Scientist
My assistant called the United Mileage Plus 1K help line and that was the answer we got...
There is zero chance that UA will pull the 787 out of circulation absent the discovery of a problem or an order from the FAA to do so. They have 46 in the fleet currently and have ordered quite a few more. The articles that you read were sensationalized, likely due to the ongoing interest in the 737 MAX. If there were any actual safety concern, some regulator would have said something about it by now. Even if you don't trust (insert one regulator here), there are several others that could have stepped in.
Also, if there were any such plans from UA, there's no way that a 1K phone agent would be the first to know, or authorized to pass that along to customers. To take the 787 out of their fleet, they'd have to cut capacity immensely, and they'd have to drop routes like SFO-SIN entirely. They're not going to do that based upon a news article: they're going to trust their own mechanics to let them know if the plane weren't airworthy.