A brand new United Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner featuring the carrier’s next-generation Polaris Business Class cabin was forced to make an emergency diversion on Friday after a worrying electrical smell started to fill the cabin shortly after takeoff from Singapore.
The aircraft was delivered to United at the start of March and after undergoing final cabin configuration and engineering checks, it entered into commercial service on March 29.
The Boeing 787-9 (registration: N61101) marks a major milestone for United as it is the first plane to feature United’s so-called ‘Elevated’ experience with a new Polaris Business Class cabin, and other upgrades throughout the plane.
Along with the 56 Polaris Business Class suites with sliding privacy doors, the aircraft also features eight Polaris Studio seats, which are a brand new concept for United – essentially a ‘Business Class Plus’ product with larger seats, more legroom and an upgraded service.
The premium heavy airplane also features 35 Premium Plus seats, and just 123 economy seats (39 of which are Economy Plus seats with extra legroom).
Since entering service, the plane had only be operating domestic flights from its base in San Francisco as United worked through any kinks before deploying on the long-haul international routes that the airline designed it for.
That time eventually came on April 22 when the aircraft operated its first ever trans-pacific flight from San Francisco to Singapore, using United’s flagship UA1 flight number.
Given the 16 hour flight length, and the fact that the plane crosses the international date, the aircraft arrived in Singapore two days later on April 24, at around 6:50 am.
The plane remained on the ground for just a few hours, departing Singapore as flight number UA-2 at around 9:30 am for the marathon journey back to San Francisco.
The aircraft did not, however, get very far before the pilots requested an immediate return to Singapore because an electrical smell was starting to permeate throughout the cabin.
After being placed into a short holding pattern, presumably to burn off some fuel and lower the landing weight of the plane, the aircraft landed back in Singapore less than two hours after departure.
Immediate suspicion on the cause of the electrical smell fell on the massive GEnx engines that power the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, and the plane was immediately sent for testing to see whether engineers could get the electrical smell to come back while the plane was on the ground.
United was so desperate to get the plane back to San Francisco despite the risk of the crew running out of legal flying hours that it developed a plan to fly the aircraft to Honolulu where another crew would be waiting to take over the plane to complete the rest of the flight to San Francisco.
In the end, however, engineers in Singapore couldn’t clear the plane in time and the service had to be cancelled.
At the time of publication, the aircraft was back in the air and returning to San Francisco, although it has been assigned a non-routine flight number suggesting that this is a very expensive ‘ferry flight’ which means that the plane is being transported back to its home base without any passengers on board.
United confirmed that flight UA-2 on April 24 was cancelled due to a maintenance issue but has not provided any further details.
The aircraft is not currently scheduled to operate any further flights in the next few days, although this might change once United’s engineering team in San Francisco have had an opportunity to examine the aircraft.
