The B777 is probably the safest, most meticulously engineered commercial wide-body aircraft ever built.
They're also getting old, and airlines retire old aircraft.
They also substantiate the idea that the United 777-200 fleet does face an uncertain future.
Personally I'd be a lot more interested in the cause(s) of the failure and how it was handled.
A literally true sentence which falsely implies a correlation between events.
Discussion of the 777-200's economic viability has nothing to do with the Dulles incident.
The last pure Boeing product before the merger with McDonnell Douglas…
True, but they do keep the even older 757 flying.
It's not hard to notice there are other major airlines that generally maintain newer widebody fleets.
To be fair, I read all of it, and both sides of the question interest me. But the engine failure and the economics of the 777 are totally different things.
A revamp to the maintenance schedule that requires more frequent engine overhauls absolutely makes the economics of operating 777-200s even less appealing.
Boeing (Spirit division) does make the engine cowling for the 777-200, which is what separated from the aircraft and caused the fire on the ground. Even in the case of a catastrophic failure of the engine, the cowling and all of it's parts are required by regulation to remain attached to the aircraft.
There was a previous incident a few years ago also on a Pratt-powered 777-200 where an engine failure cascaded into a much more serious cowling failure. Here's an article on that previous incident. I'm unable to find a source on whether the design changes discussed were ever implemented.
https://simpleflying.com/boeing-777-engine-cover-change/
The FAA in the past several years has had a particular focus on engine cowling components departing the aircraft and causing secondary damage, the most critical example being the 737 fan cowling that separated from the engine, impacted the fuselage, broke a window, and caused a passenger to be sucked out and killed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380
> The Boeing 777-200 is not an unsafe airplane. As far as I can tell, that is not the issue even after the incident over Dulles over the weekend.
X after Y headlines are always technically correct. Sure, X is presently true. And remember scary/salacious/enraging thing Y that happened recently? So X is after Y. Click me.
There were actual commercials played before the safety video, the cabin crew warned passengers to make sure children cannot see the adult content they're watching (can you get more American than that?), and their credit card was offered multiple times during the flight. At least the WiFi was reasonably cheap.
Over here, that stuff would never fly (no pun intended), except maybe on Ryanair or other extremely low-cost carriers. On e.g. a Lufthansa longhaul flight, which are priced similarly and cover the same route I flew (fra-ord), it would be unthinkable.
Try flying Lufthansa (or one of their half dozen subsidiaries created almost entirely to give worse service) anywhere inside of europe. Everything is a money grab and the service and boarding are terrible.
United maintains a relatively consistent experience between domestic and international, minus the free alcohol.
FWIW, I just took such a flight and didn't notice anything that compares unfavorably to a domestic U.S. airline. (To be clear, it certainly wasn't better either.) Is there anything specific you can point to?
I had to walk away from a $600 ticket that I booked at the last minute b/c in the 30 seconds between the time I paid for the ticket and the time the booking returned, the connecting flight filled up and I had to wait a day I didn't have for the next one. Couldn't get a single consideration from anyone, they said they couldn't cancel the ticket b/c the first leg was still available. Just had to walk away from the money and find another airline.
I'm sure it happens on every airline but man I was pissed. They go to the bottom of the list until the next tomfoolery occurs.
Most of flights today are glorified busses, with less room, that just happen to have wings attached and staff trying to sell you things.
I’ve flown more than 50 flights this year with them.
It's like dunking on QSR, but worse. These things are practically on welfare.
Everything is fungible, high risk, extremely expensive, extremely regulated. The margins are almost nil. They all fly the same planes. You can compete on "experience", and that's basically it.
Their dingy little ads, baggage fees, and wifi upsells are the the best they can muster. That's the entire farm, and they're scraping by as best they can. This is every single airline.
What a awful, utterly unrewarding business to be in.
We in tech are unbelievably privileged.
A consistent extremely mediocre experience I guess. I've flown Lufthansa, Air France, Air Canada and United with a toddler and I'd get out of my way to avoid United in the future, never seen staff everywhere in that airline that was more unpleasant and unhelpful, especially with young children, as much as when flying United.
The largest of the airlines in America make more profit from this than the airline aspect itself.
There is far more that could be said on this but, ironically, I am on a flight and about to land.
A well optimized domestic USA airline makes money from credit cards, points, trip insurance, upsells, and segments the consumer into a dozen bins based on what they’re willing to spend for a couple more inches of leg room.
I was on a Virgin Atlantic flight last week, and while there weren't ads before the safety video, there were three ads before every movie I tried to watch... and it was the same three ads each time.
I flew Turkish in October, and was annoyed to find the movies and TV shows heavily censored, including blanking out or dubbing over minor swear words. It was also wild to see the Qur'an in the entertainment system's reading library. (No judgement there, just notable as I've never seen the Christian Bible present on other airlines.)
I think you're just falling victim to the usual thing where what you're used to feels normal, and everything else seems weird. I've definitely experienced the same as an American, when flying on European, Latin American, and Asian airlines.
https://www.theautopian.com/swissair-used-to-let-you-gamble-...
I fly on Lauda most often, who are operated by Ryanair. You show up, you get on, you sit down, a couple of hours you get off again. A trolley comes round with drinks and snacks, but it's a short journey even with a small child. Can't you just stick an orange and a bottle of water in your bag? It's what the Austrians do.
The first time I flew over with my small son he was three, and having been up since 5am was getting a little fractious and fidgety, so I explained he was probably a bit tired and bored and maybe he'd like to eat something and have a sleep, and I'd wake him up once we were back over land.
A bit later on someone further up the plane started remonstrating with the cabin crew that they didn't have the sandwich she wanted on the trolley, eventually shouting "IF IT'S ON THE MENU YOU GAVE ME I SHOULD BE ABLE TO HAVE THE DAMN SANDWICH!"
Well that shut everyone up.
And in the ringing silence that followed, a little voice, with the punch and clarity that only 3-year-olds have, that Brian Blessed or Meat Loaf would have given any limb you care to mention for, piped up:
"DADDY, DOES THAT LADY NEED A SNACK AND A WEE NAP TOO?"
I fly both airlines regularly, United is _vastly_ better from a hard product perspective, a soft product perspective, and _especially_ a service recovery standpoint.
The credit card thing is easily ignored, but you used to heard it often on European flights too before branded credit cards got wiped out there. I've never heard an announcement about adult content, and have taken over 90 United flights this year.
American airlines actually lose money on passenger flights - the cash cows are loyalty programs and freight transport [1].
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/the-four-biggest-us-airlines-al...
Is it considered normal in Europe to watch pornography on public transit in public so children can see it?
>Lufthansa longhaul flight
My experience is different. Old planes, and Lufthansa cabin crew are cold and service was poor and inattentive.
On the flipside, what they are looking at replacing the fleet with is an interesting follow-up if you regularly fly United.
Being this is the first time a GE90 popped on a 777-200 in a while? Eh, the future’s gonna keep flying ‘em.
