United Airlines is big news this week, including the return of its CEO, Oscar Muniz, as well as moves to better match its fleet to its routes and passengers. Those moves include adding new planes, changing future orders, and adding one more seat per row on domestic 777s.
The 777 squeeze will happen in economy on 19 777s. Nine of them are already in use on domestic routes, and ten more will be pulled from international service for domestic use. Their international routes will be handled by newly-added 787 Dreamliners.
United is not the first to use 10-across on 777s; it’s also in place on some AA, ANA, KLM, Air France and Emirates planes. The strategy raises revenue, and allows more passengers to fly without adding more flights. That’s important not only for cost, but also where airport slots are hard to come by.
Capacity and economy are also behind some of United’s other moves. The airline is accelerating the retirement of its remaining 4-engine 747s; they’ll be gone by the end of 2018. To replace them, United is trading in some of its due-in-2020-and-beyond 787 orders into starting-in-2017 orders for 4 777-300ERs and 5 787-9s.
That’s the big-plane department. United is also making moves at the other end, continuing to shed 50-seat class regional jets, mostly operated by regional airlines as United Express. Larger regional jets are replacing them, allowing more seats per flight; the larger regional jets in turn will give way to 737s. To meet this part of the market, United has just ordered 25 more 737-700s, for delivery starting next year.
I’ve flown in the 10 across seating configuration and it’s very tight. Certainly not the type of plane you’d want to fly to Hawaii on from the midwest or east coast.