I recently had the chance to finally fly United’s 787-10 Dreamliner. Here’s my initial thoughts about this brand new aircraft.
I was flying from Newark to Los Angeles and after a long economy class flight (due to strong headwinds) from Milan to Newark, I was quite happy to step onboard this flight.
Business class on this aircraft, all 44 seats, are positioned between doors 1 and 2. It makes for quite a massive business class cabin. The new Polaris seats are quite attractive, though I am not sure why United opted to skip mood lighting on this aircraft (unlike the 777-300ER).
United provides Saks Fifth Avenue bedding and a small amenity kit on “Premium Transcontinental” flights between Los Angeles/San Francisco and Newark as well as between Boston and San Francisco.
My objective for the flight was to eat dinner then take a nice nap. However, things did not go quite so smoothly. A summer storm rolled through Newark just as we were preparing to go. Storms enroute required more fuel, but the aircraft could not be refueled until the lighting storm stopped.
By the time we finally pulled out, three hours had passed. The crew was pretty good about offering drinks and breaking out the snack basket during the delay.
Anyway, when we finally took off I enjoyed a nice steak dinner with green chimichurri sauce followed by an ice cream sundae.
Flight attendants are still figuring out the 787-10, because meal service took nearly three hours to complete…far too long, especially after the delay.
I finally fell asleep with about 2.5 hours left in the flight and ended up sleeping until the final double chime just minutes before landing.
CONCLUSION
I’ve now flown United’s 787-8, -9, and -10 and definitely favor the -10 over the other two variants. First, it has the new 1-2-1 Polaris seats versus the older 2-2-2 seats. One thing I noticed, and perhaps it was just by chance, was that I was able to use my mobile phone normally onboard this aircraft. On the 787-8s and -9s my iPhone never has any reception thanks to the composite materials in the body. Maybe there is a slightly different composition in the 787-10?
Have you flown United’s 787-10? What did you think?
It’s not the composite that blocks reception, it’s the wire mesh in the skin of the aircraft that blocks RF signals. It’s like a faraday cage of sorts.
LOVE the 787-10. Flown it twice cross country and had great service (nothing close to a 3 hour food service though) and great attention by the flight attendants. Love the privacy of the window seats and large screens for entertainment
There is mood lighting; it was activated for my flight EWR-SFO back in June.
Maybe they didn’t activate it because the majority of the windows were open, which let in lots of natural light.
Nice writeup, nice aircraft. Amazing UA is running it domestic. Shows how important those routes are.
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Can you please delete the sidebar articles on the home page? The UA taking picture one is SIX years old!
(and UA has since altered their pix onboard policy.)
Thanks.
Pedro
The comment here is false. Carbon fiber alone does a pretty good job of blocking radio energy actually. So do conventional aluminum skins. The issue with the 787 vs. other planes are the windows. If cell reception is better on 781, I suspect better cellular repeaters.
Flying Polaris 787-10 ORD-OGG in June. Looking forward to comparing this service to the 767-400 from IAG-HNL we took a few years ago. We were wined and dined the whole way. Never ate so much ice cream in my life.