friendly, and so I printed my boarding
card in advance. A pre-assigned seat
could be booked for an extra £9.DREAMLINER
Boarding was by seat row order with
numbers 30-43 rst. Mine was in row
41 and on entering the Dreamliner I
was impressed by the modern and
spacious cabin. The space-saving
design of overhead baggage lockers
was immediately evident and gives
much more headroom than on previous
aircraft in which I have own. I also
noted the dimmable windows (instead
of the plastic pulldown shades more
common on older aircraft types) on this,
my rst, ight on a 787.
This 787-9, CC-BGI, was delivered
to LAN Airlines in March 2016 and still
wore the older style livery prior to it
taking over TAM Airlines in June 2012
with TAM Airlines of Brazil which created
LATAM Airlines.
LATAM has ten 787-8s and 14 of
the larger 787-9s in its eet, with the
rst Dreamliner arriving in Santiago in
August 2012. TAM had placed an orderfor Airbus A350s in June 2010
so LATAM Airlines operates
both types.
‘My 787’ had 30 atbed
seats in Premium Business
Class, with a pitch of 74in
(188cm), and 283 seats
in Economy. Of these, 51
were allocated to Space+
in Economy, which gives
an additional 2in (5cm) of
seat pitch at 34in (86cm)
compared with the standard
32in (76cm). Premium
Business Class is laid out
in a 2 x 2 x 2 con guration
compared with 3 x 3 x 3 in
the main part of the cabin.
We pushed back just a few
minutes after the scheduled
departure time of 3.05pm and
taxied past another LATAM
787 and a 767 awaiting their
passengers. The airline has
four ights a day to Madrid
from São Paulo in Brazil;
Guayaquil, Ecuador and
Lima, Peru as well as the
service from the Chilean
capital. The Dreamliner
taxied to Runway 36R and
after a short wait for another
aircraft to depart, more power
was applied to the two Rolls-
Royce Trent 1000 engines and
we lifted off into the clear blue
skies above Madrid.
Our routing took us north
over San Sebastian and
Bordeaux, climbing to a cruise
level of 40,000ft. Shortly after
levelling off, the cabin crew
started serving refreshments.
In Economy we were served
a small, but tasty, ham and
cheese roll with a choice
of soft drinks, tea, coffee,
beer or wine at no charge.
The ight attendants were
happy to serve an extra roll or
additional drinks if requested.
Passengers in Business
Class enjoyed differenthttp://www.aviation-news.co.uk 25Left: LATAM 787-9s have 30
at-bed seats in Premium
Business Class.
Below left: A one-way ticket
ying Premium Business Class
between Madrid and Frankfurt
is available from £146.Centre left: Part of the
Economy cabin on the 787-9.
Above left: An excellent variety
of in- ight entertainment was
available on the Dreamliner.
Left: A map showing the
progress of the ight on a
seat-back screen in Economy.24-26_latamDC.mfDC.indd 25 02/02/2018 14:30