laxmillenial

How is the 777-300ER reliability for TPAC flights? Specifically SFO-TPE? I've seen slight delays (up to an hour) in the past two weeks, but the arrival has been within its scheduled time / within 15 minutes.

The reason I'm asking is I have two choices:
1. Buying SFO-NRT-HKG on UA.com which has a 3 hour layover in NRT.
2. Buying SFO - TPE on UA.com; then buying TPE-HKG; HKG-TPE on Evaair.com. There's a 2 hour layover at TPE.

I know baggage can be thru checked and I lose the ability for 'pushing IRROP' and am basically at the airline's mercy should SFO-TPE cancel or be delayed severely. Am I being too picky regarding a 4 hour flight in economy on Air Japan vs a 1.5 hour flight in economy on Eva Air? Option 2 is also cheaper.

EDIT: I am purchasing this on the Chase Reserve. Travel insurance should kick in if I need to stay the night in TPE and/or buy new tickets for TPE-HKG, right? So TPE should be ok?

Kacee

No worse than any other UA aircraft. It's been noted before the TPE flight is subject to delayed departures due to its departure slot at SFO.

Not in my opinion. I'd do the TPE transfer. (And I'd probably fly CX J on Avios, but that's a carry-on only itinerary.)

FlytheTail

Many times, longhaul delays at SFO aren't related to operation of aircraft, but getting aircraft moved, cleaned, and catered on time. Most of my int'l delays have been due to "late arrival" of aircraft, yet they arrived the night before and just weren't cleaned or catered on time and/or weren't brought to the gate from remote parking on time.

I've been burned a few times by having separate tickets, so now I'm more cautious and have longer layovers. Missing the first flight of a second ticket can be expensive.

sbm12

Which travel insurance? Assuming you're talking about the Chase coverage it only includes incidentals while delayed, not replacement tickets IME. And there are other caveats around it with respect to letting the airline handle the rebooking rather than DIY efforts. So Chase would (maybe) cover your hotel and meals but otherwise you're on your own.

Buying separate travel insurance may offer better benefits but read the fine print.

UA_Flyer

I have done more than a dozen UA 77W flights this year and have not experienced any delays.
OP's question should not be focused on the reliability of 77W, but which transit point will minimize the risk of mis-connect to HK.
Why not just take SFO-HKG direct?
Both NRT and TPE transit are fairly straight forward.

laxmillenial

Sorry! Mod's please change the thread title.
There's no R space on SFO-HKG direct

jsloan

When you see that pattern, the most likely reason is favorable winds. Those flights are blocked to account for heavy winter headwinds. When they don’t occur, they can delay departure, keeping the arrival constant, or they can arrive early. They will often prefer to delay the departure, as they may have more flexibility to accommodate the extra aircraft at SFO than they do at TPE.

You can see the same pattern on most of the SFO-SIN flights recently, and those are on the 789, not the 77W.

RobOnLI

As for the reliability of the aircraft...the 777-300ER is *far and above* the utter disgrace the 787s were. That plane was grounded, cancelled, mechanical delays, you name it more than 80% of the time when it rolled out. Yes, 80% is subjective but based on my high use of the aircraft and/or of waiting for inbound connecting passengers at IAH to South America (they were flying the 787 from SFO to IAH which was often delayed 3+ hours due to mechanical issues).

-RM

mduell

It's pretty bad. Looking at longhaul (block > 8h) flights from June 1 (when longhaul 77W got going with some volume) through last Sunday, it's the worst active widebody in the fleet for A14. By A60, which I sometimes argue is more relevant for longhaul than A14, it's worse than the 772 and all 787s.

zrs70

With option 2, is there a reason you don’t get it all on one ticket? Is it cheeper to buy two>

sbm12

I'll bet significantly cheaper than the end-on-end pricing one would get between UA/BR on a single ticket. Many cheaper fares these days do not allow such combinations.

laxmillenial

On 016 ticketing on 1 PNR, it costs about 2K more. Buying separate UA and then BR segments saves me 2K.

Kacee

And that's because BR will only sell discount fares on its own stock. You have to buy a full Y/B to get it on one UA ticket.