United Airlines has plans to restart their Boeing 787 "Dreamliner" flights beginning on May 20, according to USA Today. The new flights will run between hubs out of the recently renamed Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport.
The flights became visible in the United reservation system on May 4, confirmed Christen David, the United spokeswoman.
Prior to the update, the flights were scheduled to resume service on May 31. The airline had indicated that date was subject to change, however, stating that "additional schedule changes" were possible.
The first flight on the new schedule will be departing from Houston to Chicago O'Hare at 11 a.m.
The planes were grounded by safety regulators in mid-January due to concerns of the lithium-ion batteries overheating. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has since approved the plan presented by Boeing to fix the problem, which has allowed the planes to resume scheduling passenger flights.
The first airline to resume flights on the redesigned planes was Ethiopian Airlines, which began flying the 787 on its Addis Ababa to Nairobi route on April 27. Qatar Airways joined shortly thereafter, resuming its Dreamliner service last week with flights running the route from Doha to London.
United currently only has plans to use the Dreamliner for the one trip on May 20 on that particular route. They do plan to continue adding flights with an increasing number of Chicago to Houston flights throughout May and continuing into June.
The Dreamliner will begin operating along other routes in May as well, with flights between Houston and Denver on May 21 and flights between Houston and Los Angeles beginning on May 24. These routes will see a gradually increasing number of flights as well.
The Dreamliner will not resume service internationally for United until June 10, when the airline will launch a nonstop service between Denver and Tokyo's Narita Airport.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
