Going the distance The 787 Dreamliner family has been expanding airlines’ reach and making long-haul routes a dream to fly BY KATE EVERSON t the Network Operations Center in United Airlines’ Chicago headquarters, flight tracker Bill Parker keeps an eye on the skies. But here, the skies are digital. And the airplanes—including Boeing 757s, 767s, 777s and 787 Dreamliners— take the form of dozens of blue and white icons inching across desktop monitors projecting weather patterns, map lines and flight trajectories, as if along a psychedelic web. Sometimes Parker’s wife is on one of those airplanes: She’s a flight attendant on the 787 Dreamliner’s longest route, San Francisco nonstop to Singapore. 26 | BOEING FRONTIERS Since adding the 787 to its fleet in September 2012, United Airlines has expanded its well-known advertising slogan, “fly the friendly skies,” by flying them farther. In June 2013, it began service from Denver to Tokyo, then added seven other nonstop flights on so-called long, thin routes, which previously required the range and fuel capacity of large jets such as the 747 but didn’t have the passenger volume to fill them. Other airlines such as All Nippon Airways (ANA), Norwegian Air Shuttle and Etihad Airways also have opened new routes. Since the 787 began service with launch customer All Nippon Airways in October 2011, more than 120 new routes have been opened or announced by airlines flying the 787, nearly all of them using the Dreamliner’s 242- to 290-passenger capacity and 7,300- to 7,600-mile (13,500- to 14,000-kilometer) range, depending on whether they are flying the 787-8 or 787-9 model. The most recent: British Airways’ flight between London and New Orleans, to begin in 2017. When the 787 family was in development, the Boeing marketing team came up with more than 400 routes the 787 could open up with its unique efficiency, size and range, said Randy A
Frontiers December 2016 Issue
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