Ben Mutzabaugh from USA TODAY, released an article on how United Airline is planning to fix and retrofit 19 of the 74 Boeing 777s. These Boeing 777s are considered wide bodies that are in a seating arrangement in which it would allow for 10 abreast seating in the economy class.
In terms of which of the 19 Boeing 777s that will be changed, it will mostly be done to planes that are flying domestically. Nine of them to be specific. The other ten will be from Boeing 777s in United Airline’s long-haul international routes.
It is pretty popular that airlines are moving towards the trend of using 10 seats across the coach cabin. About half of the airlines that have ordered from Boeing has requested for this new popular seating arrangement. According the Boeing, that number was only at 30% during the year of 2008.
To give you an idea of which airlines are adopting this new style, KLM, Air France, Air New Zealand, All Nippon Airways, and Emirates are changing some of their planes to this configuration.
Some currently seating arrangements includes United Airline’s domestic 3-4-3 configuration as all as a 9 seat across which is a 2-5-2 configuration.
United Airlines plans to have all of the 19 Boeing 777’s retrofitted by May of 2017. These retrofitted 777’s will be Wi-Fi enabled which will allow passengers to access the internet from their mobile device. There will also be two mobile device holders for phones and tablets per seat in the economy class.
