[Digory]

"...777 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure ... and also before Dulles engine failure, for reasons having nothing to do with the Dulles engine failure."

To be fair, I read all of it, and both sides of the question interest me. But the engine failure and the economics of the 777 are totally different things.

[zymhan]

Why are they totally different? For such an old airframe, the only significant costs are fuel and maintenance.

A revamp to the maintenance schedule that requires more frequent engine overhauls absolutely makes the economics of operating 777-200s even less appealing.

[coredog64]

The article's TL;DR is that the economics of 30-year old P&W4090 engines make these airframes even less useful to United.