Delta and United are retiring their 747 fleet as airlines continue to move away from gas guzzling 4 engine airplanes.
My son Rafi has been on over 100 flights and is obsessed with airplanes and especially the Queen Of The Skies, the 747.
I took him to San Francisco the month before United discontinued their Chicago-San Francisco 747 route in May. And of course I used miles to fly on the upper deck where he could walk up the stairs and spend time in the cockpit. His joy was contagious even to the checkin agents and he still talks about the trip all the time.
But apparently United still flies 747s on the Chicago-San Francisco route. They just don’t advertise it.
A Flyertalker wrote that he was booked on a United 747 today from Chicago-San Francisco. I looked but couldn’t find it on United.com when booking a ticket or when looking at the flight status page for that route.
I went to ITA Matrix and searched with advance routing code “UA / aircraft t:747” and it too confirmed that there were no 747 flights for sale on the route.
ITA did get some hits when searching “DL / aircraft t:747” with 747 flights on Delta from Detroit to Atlanta, Settle to Atlanta, and Atlanta to Seattle on 11/26. Seattle to Atlanta and Atlanta to Seattle on 11/27. And Atlanta to Detroit on 11/28. I used my list of airports that comes in handy for hidden city fares lower than Skiplagged’s to find those.
Upon looking closer I did find the 747, it was just hiding.
Searching for a flight from Chicago-San Francisco this morning showed a flight advertised as an A320:
But clicking on the seat map showed the largest A320 known to mankind. Or a 747 masquerading as an A320:
Same story for the return flight from San Francisco to Chicago showing as an A320:
Until you open the seat map and see that it’s a 747:
Flight Aware confirms that it’s indeed a 747, with an apparent identity crisis. Perhaps it figures that posing as an A320 will save it from this fate?
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20 Comments On "United Has 747s Masquerading As A320s"
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Planefinder.net is the most amazing website, check there.
Now which cabin would a First award book into..? 😉
I bet Rafi loved this story.
Any reason as to why they would do this? If I knew that delta was using 747s on certain domestic routes I’d definitely pay a slight premium to fly on one
Doesn’t Elal use 747s all the time?
@Quowsh:
Excellent question.
@Mike:
Sure, but if you just want to fly upstairs on a 747 you can get a domestic business class award ticket for a small fraction of the cost of an international ticket.
Also, El Al will probably retire theirs within the next couple of years as well.
Nice video you link at the end.
Lucky Rafi! So how many miles (as in points) has this kid got in his pocket? Enough for some first class round the world tickets for his Bar Mitzvah? 🙂
Does he have a favorite airline or airplane to fly on? Lol.
It’s amazing the things you can still do even in a post 9/11 world… kudos!
@Mike: yes, but they are slowly moving to 777s as the fleet ages.
Unfortunately, they are prevented from purchasing Airbus, due to various trade “agreements” (read: arm twisting) with the US State Dept. that made purchasing only Boeing a prerequisite of the various aid packages provided to Israel.
Oh UA! They’ve assured me that my “flight” from EWR-ZFV is on a Bomberdier 200 aircraft despite the fact that there’s no runway. It took them a while to switch it back to “train service”.
@Jacob:
Definitely the United and the 747.
He calls AA “So baby airlines” for making us miss out on London with their broken 77W plane.
I may be spoiling him a bit too much though, here’s his before bedtime hot take on the industry…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS7DjcE6G_Y
@Yehoshua:
LOL!
@Dan: very cute but I dont understand the delta hate. There are some great ways to fly DL using partner awards… 🙂
@MosheD:
No F awards with DL 😀
Yes, it was the N197UA, (usually used on 8-12 hour flights).
@Dan The benefit of using Skiplagged over ITA, is that ITA will only show options with 1 stop, (meaning your preferred “Stopover” and destination) while Skiplagged will show 3 leg options (meaning 2-3 legs after your preferred “Stopover”) which at times has saved me a considerable amount of money.
@Elya:
It’s worth comparing both methods.
@Dan
True. Was just pointing out one specific benefit.
This is United’s version of progressive thinking. Accepting a 747 that self identifies as an A320. It’s 2016, please respect the plane’s decision.
@Dan: You mean ELAL will retire them in a couple of decades, maybe… Awful aircraft condition on these old ELAL 747s. Very often they have to turn back for emergency landing because of lack of maintenance, and you can’t expect that much from a 30 year old airplane. If you take ELAL again, go to the back to see economy class condition.
@Alex:Sounds like a pretty good deal to me
having a hard time finding a 747 route. any suggestions on finding it since 747 code doesnt work on ITA matrix?