Looking to further leverage the value of the 787 Dreamliner on long, thin routes, United Airlines has announced today that they will be launching service between their Denver and Tokyo hubs starting in 2013. The route will begin with the 31 March 2013 departure from Denver; the first departure from Tokyo will be on 1 April 2013.
UA123 DEN1155 – 1500+1NRT 788 D 31MAR13-
UA122 NRT1640 – 1230DEN 788 D 01APR13-
Also of note on the schedule is that the total round-trip time for the flights is just over 24 hours. This means that there will be other connecting flights in and out of Denver to get the planes into position to operate the flights. Look for Houston-Denver to show up on the timetable operated by the 788 in the same timeframe.
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Some reward seats available I see in the early days of the service, but only at the Standard Award Rate
There should always be Standard awards available if you’re elite or have the co-branded Chase card. Those get last-seat inventory for the rule-buster awards. I was quite excited when I managed to score the HNL-IAD inaugural at the saver level, but that’s a different sort of beast.
Hooray!!!!! I’ve been waiting for DEN-Asia service for a LONG time!
If IAH is where they position from, they have two options…the early 739 and 753 (UA199 and UA1001) both arrive in time to service NRT.
Seth: Fare is still available, but now is S Class. B is $5500.
The B fare is still available at $980 round trip but not on the inaugural. Details here: http://blog.wandr.me/2012/05/making-a-mileage-run-out-of-the-denver-tokyo-united-route/.The S fare is quite a bit more expensive.
I do see now that they updated the $980 fare to be an S fare, just like they probably meant in the first place. Hopefully plenty of folks got in on the deal while it was still alive.
Not quite as great a deal at $980 on an S versus a B, but not horrid as a fare to Tokyo.