char777

DEN wanted a flight to NRT real bad and tried to get NH to launch it, but nothing ever became of it. Only UA has ever flown DEN-NRT nonstop.

FliesCasually

Any insight into delays DEN/NRT? Yesterday flightstats was showing the 143 flight as 0.1 out of 5 stars for on-time performance. I've flown this route 7 times since 2013 and 3 had late arrivals with missed connections. The latest was this month.

As travel time approaches I start watching United's flight stats, particularly "aircraft coming from". Recently it seems (haphazard statistics) I've seen planes arriving the night before, and being unable to fly the next day. Is Denver doing maintenance on DreamLiners? If my observation is accurate, I'd have to wonder if it's a Denver problem or something more general. I was told walking to the HND bus in 2016 "the ground crew poked a hole in the plane". Which kind of flavors my suspicions.

When I first started thinking, it seemed "they must be losing millions this month" from the poor performance. But as I continued thinking, it began to seem like one could certainly reroute 80 passengers a week through HND, or probably rent them overnight hotel rooms, without triggering a loss. Maybe. Certainly revenue for the flight would decrease, but I can't speculate by what percentage. Nor would I know their revenue target for the quarter. Expectations sometimes lower when problems repeatedly rise. I'd appreciate a pointer to anyone who has made a more quantitative, knowledgeable, post on the real cost of MX rebooking. The (poor) quality of my conjecture is "a full cost Polaris Seat on this route would probably cover 10 or 15 hotel rooms".

PushingTin

I thought this bird came from Houston, as in IAH-DEN-NRT-DEN-IAH with two birds alternating?

FliesCasually

United shifts 787s from Houston to IAD; Plans to close IAH 787 pilot base

I'd speculate the flight number changing from 139 to 143 is part of the picture. All I know is my "random" clicks on "Where is this plane coming from" don't show Houston anymore.

DENviaLAX

Yes. Generally the plane for the NRT flight comes in the night before from IAD. Its then towed to the hangar where they have been doing A checks overnight. Then comes back in the morning for the flight to NRT.

mrswirl

My recent DEN-IAD 787 flight was severely delayed due to a mechanical problem (was told it needed an actuator replaced). The plane had arrived in DEN the night before and apparently it took maintenance almost 24 hours to resolve the problem. Makes me concerned about the ongoing reliability and safety of the 787's as it seems there is a general trend towards higher maintenance related delays.

FliesCasually

flightstats and flightaware show the Feb 17th flight 143 DEN to NRT flown by a 777.

Huh.

I recall early publicity implied the flight required the new long distance technology of the Dreamliner.

EmailKid

Curious what prompted you to look

While orginal search for DEN-NRT flights on UAL.com show a 788, on clicking through it does indeed show 777-200 for that day only. It certainly wasn't for coach pax, as there are plenty of middles in E+ while Biz is sold out according to seatmap (not sure if this link will work after Sunday as officiall UAL.com only shows stats one day prior and two days in advance).

As for technology, if a 777 can fly to NRT from IAH and EWR, it can certainly do it from DEN. It was a matter of fuel consumption, i.e. lower fuel burn, thus an economic issue masked as technological.

FliesCasually

It's become a habit. I take the flight a few times a year. I intend to purchase a ticket in a few weeks, and I have concerns about the on time reliability.

I'm sure remapping the seat assignments from 787 to 777 would be chaos, but I'm glad they have another strategy besides delaying the flight four hours when the outbound plane has a problem. I'd never seen a non DreamLiner on this route. Being on time would be more important for me than the aircraft type.

EmailKid

This is a quiet thread, so I asked over in UA fleet updateses where some insiders post, maybe they will answer. At least I hope, I'm curious myself now. BTW, the flight back was a different 777. Biz1st full to NRT, one seat empty on the way back, I assume filled with upgraders; the flight back showed 6 IIRC, so with one empty everyone who applied miles/ca$h or GPUs got the u/g.

sbm12

Just a matter of operating the route profitably, not a matter of technically possible or not.

Around 4a DEN time on the 16th it swapped from a 787 to a 777. In quick succession it went from N27908 to N20904 to N2136U to N792UA. A few hours later it swapped to N228UA. And then to N223UA. The aircraft did SFO-DEN-NRT-HNL and is currently en route HNL-NRT. It will continue to IAD later on the 19th.

Looks like N20904 cancelled in NRT operating as NRT-DEN UA142/16FEB and that had the company scramble a bit to get everything back in place.

Also, N792UA was supposed to operate FRA-IAD on the 15th but CXLD and was stuck in FRA an extra night.

mr8

Isn't the 777 a larger aircraft with more capacity? I thought the main reason they used the 787 on this route was because it is a long and "thin" route with fewer passengers.

BrianUA800

UA143, departed on Feb 27, seemed to have diverted to Anchorage. The flight is is scheduled to arrived in NRT 3hours 9 minutes late.
United.com provides no reasons for this diversion. Anyone know of the reason(s) ?

GBadger

Not sure, but if I had to guess it would be medical emergency.

NgatesSEA

Agree this seems most likely - our UA142 (NRT-DEN) diverted in October when a crew member had a medical emergency. There were 4-5 TPAC aircraft at ANC and all sounded from ATC to be medical event diversions.