When a United Airlines flight left San Francisco last week to establish a nonstop link to Singapore, United not only capitalized on an ill-considered decision by Singapore Airlines, but it also highlighted what can only be called the Revenge of the Dreamliner.
United's new San Francisco-Singapore nonstops, you see, are operated with Boeing 787s. You surely remember the Dreamliner. That's the $200-million-a-copy plane prematurely pronounced dead by jittery experts three years ago after a panicked grounding and handwringing over the aircraft's safety.
I never worried about flying the Dreamliner, but even I'm amazed at how quickly the Boeing 787 has shaken off its shaky start and become a mainstay of global aviation. The plane is literally remaking the world's route map.
More than 400 Dreamliners have been delivered since All Nippon Airways operated the first commercial flight late in 2011. Another 1,100 orders from 62 airlines and other customers are on Boeing's books, the planemaker says. Nearly 100 million people have flown the aircraft and Dreamliners have flown more than 1.2 billion revenue miles without serious incident since the initial spate of trouble.
Read more at the Denver Business Journal: http://bit.ly/1ZCiXpy
