So, I was just looking up flights for a trip I’m hoping to take to Chicago. I just wanted to see how much a ticket would cost to get home, so I looked up flights from Chicago to SFO. And I found this interesting flight: 
Is that right? Does American really fly their 787 on such a short route for that aircraft?
Most business people will fly that route in the morning to make further connections or just to do buisiness in Chicago
Plenty of airlines do this, to either move aircraft, or suppress the load on the smaller aircraft. For example: Air Canada uses the 767 on routes like CYYC-CYYZ or CYUL-CYEG which are both only 4 hours. These are all hub/ focus city routes so I could see that happening.
United also uses 777-200s on that route, some 757s, 737s, the all sorts
EDIT: @Balloonchaser must have stopped chasing those balloons real fast to beat me
Huh… Alright then. I didn’t realize that you could physically be able to fly the 787 on a route like that. I thought the 787 was designed with only long-distance in mind…
I find that for a lot of Air Canada’s trans-pacific routes start in YYZ, then go via YVR or YYC then trans-pacific all in the one aircraft.
Eh, they also use A321s, which I doubt they would send from Calgary to Asia
The A321’s are probably stopping in the city, I’m talking 767,777,787
That 787 is probably flying on to Asia after the SFO stop. I’ve flown 777 from Denver to LAX before and that’s maybe a 3 hour flight.
It’s probably a repositioning flight. You are probably able to see where that aircraft will be heading once you get off at SFO. Probably to one of the cities in Asia.
Airlines will sometimes use large planes for short or medium routes because it’s a largly flown route for their airline. So using a larger aircraft will carry more passengers.
Sometimes a large demand = a large plane. Which in the long run saves money for the airlines since they have to technically buy less fuel
Yea sometimes airlines replace there reguler route planes because of service checks
I have a paper to avoid, and this does seem interesting. Heres what I found:
American does use a 788 on this route to operate as AAL345 daily. Sometimes it uses the same aircraft on the ORD-SFO route that it dies on the return SFO-ORD. Look here to see
day-by-day history and schedule of AAL345: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/aa345
Looking at the flights of each of those aircraft (click on the N-numbers), it seems like planes that operate AAL345 also tend to fly from ORD and SFO to Tokyo Narita, Dallas, Paris, and London. My guess is this question has a much larger answer in American’s route structure and how they distribute their aircraft. I didn’t expect to find a plane of that size on such a short route, but it appears it isn’t wholly uncommon!
Yes, they do KORD-KDFW
Huh. That’s all very interesting. It definitely gives insight to how American does plane routing.
British airways and Iberia use a 77w and A346 for London Heathrow to Madrid for cargo and pax capacity as it links London to Madrid which is a massive hub for flights to south east America. Another reason is that it allows them to repostiotion aircraft. For example a flight could come in from, say Amsterdam and then fly a route, for example New York-Miami for a flight to brazil
Aircraft aren’t making money when they’re sitting on the ground so if there is space in the schedule between returning from a LH flight to departing on another LH flight then the aircraft will be used. No use having it sit on the ground taking up a stand or a parking slot if it can be used.
I’ve done plenty of SH destinations on the 777.
Well in China the flights between Beijing and Shanghai, the two biggest cities, are mostly wide-body jets like 788, A332, even 748, 77W and the latest A350. And the frequency is basically half an hour a flight. And all the four major airlines in China (Air China, China Eastern, China Southern and Hainan) do that. And most of the flights are full, each with over 50 gold and platinum members on board.
Flights between Beijing and Guangzhou, Shenzhen are more or less the same.
Guess you offer your best to the cash cows. Interesting thing is, even with high speed railway that gave people more comfortable options (but not necessarily cheaper price), the flights are still crowded.
One of the reason is probably because there are not many regional flights in China. Chinese people travel from hub to hub much more often than the US.
I sometimes found these large jets fly international lines before their domestic flights. And at that time passengers will have to take shuttle bus from domestic departure to the international bridges where these jets were parked. Pain in the ass.
The airline could possibly be using it also to transport the 787 to the west coast to do a trans-pacific flight later that day.
American also uses them for flights to dallas fort worth.