Featured Map for 10 October 2015:
United's San Francisco 787 Dreamliner Hub

On Thursday, United Airlines announced plans to add three new Boeing 787 Dreamliner destinations from United's hub at San Francisco International Airport, bringing the total to ten destinations.

From San Francisco, United plans to serve Tel Aviv with thrice-weeekly service using the larger and longer-range 787-9 starting 30 March 2016. (United already serves Tel Aviv twice daily from its Newark hub using Boeing 777 aircraft.)

Auckland, New Zealand will also be served three times per week starting 1 July 2016 using the smaller 787-8, increasing to daily service (upgauged to the 787-9) in October. This service will augment Star Alliance-partner Air New Zealand's existing daily service on the route using Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

On 8 May 2016, United plans to launch seasonal, thrice-weekly service to Xi'an, China, new service which was announced last month and the first trans-Pacific service for the capital of China's Shaanxi Province.

Today's Featured Map shows the three new routes in green, along with United's existing or previously-announced seven 787 Dreamliner routes from SFO in red. The map uses an azimuthal equidistant projection, which shows the whole globe, splayed out with the antipode of the center stretched to form the entire circumference of the map. An orthographic projection is often preferable, but it only shows one hemisphere (viewed from the perspective of a point in space infinitely far away) which didn't work for this map because several destinations are more than one-quarter of the world away from SFO and thus would not have been visible.

Updated 12 October 2015:

A sharp-eyed reader noticed that Sydney was missing from the list of United's 787 Dreamliner destinations from San Francisco. Though United's non-stops to Sydney from both San Francisco and Los Angeles currently use Boeing 777-200ER aircraft (which replaced the Boeing 747-400 in March 2014), United plans to switch these flights to the 787-9 Dreamliner in March 2016. The map has been updated accordingly.

References and additional information:

• United Airlines
  • United Airlines Made SFO the Best Pacific Hub. And Then Found 3 Ways to Make it Better. (8 October 2015)
  • United Airlines Applies to U.S. DOT for Authority to Operate 787 Service to Xi'an, China (22 September 2015)
• United Airlines will give Boeing Dreamliner quite the workout in San Francisco in 2016 – Chicago Business Journal (8 October 2015)
• United Builds a Boeing 787 Hub at San Francisco With Nine 787 Destinations – TheStreet (9 October 2015)
• United Airlines will switch Sydney-US flights to 787-9 Dreamliners – The Australian Financial Review (31 August 2015)
• United Airlines' solid, not sexy, kangaroo hop – The Australian Financial Review (16 May 2014)
• Air New Zealand
• Boeing 787 Dreamliner – The Boeing Company