SeattleDavid

I thought this too after my first couple of flights, but recently I've changed my mind: two TATL flights in new C and i slept deeply through the whole flight both times, waking just in time for a late breakfast. Old F never gave me as good a rest.

Who knows what the next trip will bring? Y, perhaps :-(

David

StayUnited

Learned

As new aircraft come on line - who knows?! It's going to get it at some point. To me, it makes sense that they will complete the LHR loop, especially to give consistency to IAD.

Can never say never but, as it stands, that is the winter schedule.

unavaca

If it's serving UA924 for IAD-LHR, which flight is it operating for the return LHR-IAD leg?

HaeMaker

Not sure if this has been posted before, but is UA widening the 777s?



I was checking availability of award travel in the future and found the above when checking the seat map.

OtleyFlyer

It's the special new first class cabin for the merged airline with 10 inch seat widths...

rajsbasi

I think I would agree that the old seats are actually more comfy than the new ones, the new ones although great for IFE lack personal storage and are very narrow and almost seem claustrophobic. Theres definitely more room to stretch out in the old seats. I just did a run to LAX and back from EWR on CO and I must profess their BF product is much better than UA's biz in all respects, I hope in the new United BF remains over Uniteds C.

CaptainBilly

I have to say at 6 feet 4 and 240 lbs that I find the new seats to be great compared to the old barcaloungers. They are just long enough for me to stretch out and just wide enough for my shoulders.

I can understand that in old 777 international seat 8F for example you can stretch a bit farther than in the new seats. But unless a person is taller than I am (and you may be) stretching out is no problem. I have to believe that includes 99+% of female passenger and a high percentage of males.

Of course claustrophobia is a different issue. The new C seats don't bother me. But don't ask me to squeeze through a narrow cave passage 400 feet underground!

Clearly our mileage varies...

CB

mikel51

I like the new seats better for sleeping and the old seats better if staying awake. OTOH, the new IFE is much better if you are staying awake (assuming that you haven't already seen all the movies you want).

jef7

Could not agree with you more. Just finished a trip to Europe on 777's old C, and I must say my tolerance for these old seats is growing thinner every flight . I can't wait for the new C seats to be installed uniformly among every single 777s.

CaptainBilly

Good! Glad to hear that UA is managing the transition to minimize the mingling of converted / non-converted aircraft on the same routes. The 747 / 767 transition was painful in that it seemed from a passenger's perspective that the converted planes were randomly intermingled on routes. Seat assignments and even more importantly which cabin you were assigned were too much of an unknown.

I presume that UA had a plan for the 747 / 767 transition but it didn't feel like it.

If UA is trying to transition one route / city pair / destination city at a time from non-converted to converted I think that is very sensible. Certainly we would like to get the new configuration on whatever routes we fly. But I prefer to have a higher degree of certainty as to exactly what seat and cabin that I have even if it's the old config rather than a seat / cabin craps game.

CB

P.S. If the 757s ever get converted to the new, "testbed" configuration I dread the transition period. More than half of my travel is on 757s and the change to E+ and the 15 and 16 exit rows will mean guessing whether I'm in E+ exit or E-.

entrada

I am flying LAX-LHR in november. Based on the seat map it appears this will be the new config. I would plan to use a SWU for the flight, but the business class is showing no (or only 1) seat available. From what I gather from reading above, UA may not have released the business class seats yet. If this is the case, it seems like it would still be worth paying the W fare for this and applying an SWU hoping for an upgrade, right?

danville 1K

Are you looking at the seat map, with only 8G available? If so that is no indication of the loads in business class on the flight. For some reason that's how all the seat maps for business class on a 77Q are showing until seemingly 12 hours before the flight.

RNE

What's the rationale for preferring 3-3-3 over 2-5-2? Or 2-4-3 for that matter?

Portolan

We had the same previous (positive) experience that made the old config with 21HJ with E++ (behind the crew rest) our favorite aircraft flying on any airline. Having read that the new config was showing up on the LHR-IAD run, I checked our October return and, sure enough, its been switched. Our 21 HJ became 21AB. I'm curious about whether there is any consistent pattern to the way seats have been remapped. We certainly would have been happier with 21JK. But understand that with 9 seats in the first row of coach and only 7 seats in the new config, something had to give. Did we just "wrap around" as it appears. Other strange thing is that all the right side E+ triplets are full (would have prefered the right side since that'll be the shaded side). When last I looked at the seat map (a couple of weeks ago), there wasn't all that much booked in E+.

Best I could do was 22AC with hope for a vacant seat (21C was already booked).

Won't cause us to look for a new airline, but now makes the 767 our favorite plane flying.

Markie

I have a feeling that United might be holding some of these seats to deal with problems, but now I will take a 763 over a 777 on UA every time.