Originally Posted by theasianguy

There are 3 active planes with the old configuration at the moment: JA787A, JA790A, JA791A, and one plane JA792A in XMN for C check maintenance. All 4 are expected to be flying for the summer schedule.

My guess is that the old configuration will be NRT based, flying NRT-SFO and NRT-LAX taking up exactly 4 aircraft. Technically, it is possible for 4 aircraft to fly HND-ORD-NRT-SFO-NRT-ORD-HND on a 4 day cycle, but that would leave no slack at all in the schedule.

The reason why NRT-HNL might have a few one-off 77W flights is that if this subfleet were isolated to NRT, each aircraft would have 24+ hours on the ground between their 15:25/16:30 SFO/LAX arrival and 17:00 departure the next day. A NRT-HNL-NRT rotation can be complete in less than 24 hours, and the scheduling fits in perfectly with a 20:10 NRT departure and 15:05 arrival the next day. The HNL flights would obviously have to operate at sub-daily frequency so the 77Ws aren't flying 18+ hours per day.