United 747 Domestic Flights
 

Does UAL ever do any swaps for 747s between hubs?

Ever since flying as a kid it's on my bucket list but both price and time for an international trip are prohibitive.

I saw a different thread that hinted around Easter on a 5:30pm flight from ORD to SFO but didn't have any luck.

Thanks for any guidance/help!

exceptionally rare -- UA has set up SFO & ORD as the primary 747 bases and have little need to move 747s.. But occasionally you will hear a report of domestic 747 here on FT.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...-than-p-s.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...tic-route.html

Currently domestic 747 service is usually done for repositioning after unscheduled maintenance or unexpected events — for example, when SFO lost a lot of capacity after the OZ214 disaster, UA ran multiple 747s LAX-SFO with about one day's advance notice.

A few years back there was a 747 doing a regular rotation SFO-ORD // ORD-SFO, but this service is no longer a 747. (You can still usually find an internationally configured 777 on this route.)

If you suspect that there's a 747 flight in April 2014, you can rapidly check schedules using ITA Matrix and the "/aircraft t:747" parameter:

http://i.imgur.com/zRmziNT.png

This search returns no results (there is no UA 747 currently scheduled to operate ORD-SFO or vice versa on any day in April).

It happens a lot less often now that loads are higher. Instead of doing SFO-NRT-ORD-SFO, they'll typically do the "W" pattern -- SFO-NRT-ORD-NRT-SFO -- to get back to the 747 MOC.

Yes, around Easter 2013, United had a 747 on the ORD-SFO route as a one-off repositioning flight. At the time, UA was temporarily shifting all of its 747 operations to SFO (except for the once-daily LAX-SYD-MEL flight) due to frequent mechanical problems with their 747 fleet. (It's far easier to keep a spare 747 on-hand and do more frequent, pro-active inspections if you have one main base rather than two.)

UA has now announced that it will resume flying 747's from ORD.

Edit: Relevant start of another FT thread

Didn't see the thread, but when I was searching for flights to Europe for Oct 2014 saw a 747 flying from Chicago to Europe. Sorry, forgot which destination. Of course that far out, who knows with all the changes UA si making in their schedules / equipment :rolleyes: :confused:

ORD-FRA for sure

747 Alert
 

SFO-EWR UA1751 Noon 1/6. Returning as 1752 on 1/7 at 11 AM.

Woahhhhhh

Methinks it's to get as many stranded pax out as they can (similar what UA used to do in the old shuttle daze when 3 flights were cancelled so they would change the 4th flight to a '47 and put everyone that they could on that flight).

Most likely. When was the last time EWR saw UA 747 for revenue?

You can get a EWR to SFO ticket for $1500. F and J for 400 more.

Boarding process will be interesting to watch.

completely empty on the SFO-EWR segment so far.

Perhaps because you'd either have to seriously pay up, or get on it via IRROPs. No award seats either.
F9, FN0, A0, ON0, O0, J9, JN0, C0, D0, Z0, ZN0, P0, PN0, R0, RN0, IN0, I0, Y9, YN0, B0, M0, E0, U0, H0, HN0, Q0, V0, W0, S0, T0, L0, K0, G0, N0, XN0, X0

This has to be due to Irops. Remember a year or two ago they ran a 777 JFK-ORD

Ahhh, the good 'ol days.... I remember that well.