United Will Soon Fly a Huge 767 Biz Cabin From Chicago, Too
United Airlines operates what's arguably the most interesting Boeing 767-300 in the sky — the carrier's "high-J" configuration sports a whopping 46 business-class seats, arranged in a 1-1-1 configuration and spread between 18 rows. That's one massive Polaris cabin, especially for such a small wide-body plane.
The airline is currently working through the process of retrofitting 21 aircraft with this particular config, offering 46 biz seats, 22 Premium Plus seats (in a 2-2-2 arrangement), 47 Economy Plus seats and just 52 in regular coach. That's one premium-heavy plane!
Initially, this 46-biz-seater was primarily operating flights between Newark (EWR) and London Heathrow (LHR), but, per Routes Online, it'll begin serving the Chicago (ORD)-London market beginning on July 8 as well.
As of now, only the 9:15pm departure from Chicago, United 938, is scheduled to be flown with the retrofitted plane, operating as flight 959, with a 2:50pm London departure on the return. As United adds more high-J planes to the fleet, I imagine all three daily Chicago-London flights will eventually have the new arrangement, including United's far-superior Polaris seat.
I haven't come across any saver business-class awards on United's ORD-LHR flights, unfortunately, but paid fares are available starting at $2,950 round-trip, for select dates in August.
Newark flyers, meanwhile, should expect to find the high-J 767-300 operating four of the five daily London flights, also starting on July 8. Beginning on that date, all but the 8:30am Newark departure have the 46-seat Polaris cabin.
With more than a dozen additional aircraft on the way, we'll see the high-J 767 pop up on more and more routes. While the 18-row cabin was a bit challenging for the crew to navigate, in my experience, having so many more business-class seats available should help boost your chances of an upgrade — and, perhaps at some point, finding a saver award.
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