United Airlines today announced new daily nonstop service from Newark to Istanbul, Turkey effective July 1, 2012, pending government approval. More interesting, however, is the planned aircraft configuration the route will experience effective August 28.
According to the press release:
Now here’s the revealing part:
Unless I missed a previous release, this is the first I’m hearing United will be converting some internationally configured 767-300s into two-cabin aircraft with BusinessFirst, Economy Plus and regular Economy. Continental doesn’t have a fleet of -300s, so this is an interesting development. United currently operates 21 of the international premium travel experience (IPTE) 767-300s.
The shrinking Economy Plus section is a bit worrisome to me and also interesting to note.
[Edited to add:] I ended up jumping the gun on this post and missed the release Brad has linked below in the comments where United is converting the domestic 767-300s into the aircraft that will be flying the EWR-IST route (and others). Sorry folks!
They aren’t converting any of the IPTE 763s to a two class config with BF. They are, however, converting the domestic 763s to 2 class BF config. My guess is that they will switch to the BF config once they have completed at least two conversions.
Apparently N675UA is in the new configuration. I have not seen it, but it was out of service for a month and a half, conversions were supposed to start in late 2011, and I heard from a few people it was the first to be converted.
You did miss a press release. UA announced several months ago that they were converting the current two class domestic 767-300 fleet to a two-class international configuration with BusinessFirst, EconomyPlus, and Economy seating, as well as winglets and other enhancements to improve their range and efficiency.
The current three class international 767-300 fleet will remain in a GlobalFirst, BusinessFirst, EconomyPlus, and Economy configuration.
@Kris @Steven: Thanks for the info. My apologies!
Here is the press release: http://ir.unitedcontinentalholdings.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=83680&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1598567
@Brad: Thanks!
What will happen to those 767-300ER that UA uses to Hawaii?
@SW: Those are the aircraft, actually, that will be converted to the BusinessFirst, Economy Plus & Economy that I mentioned in this post. I was incorrect originally. See Brad’s comment for a link to that press release.