I have really wanted to fly in a Boeing 787. To date, never happened.
My brother who is FAR more well travelled than I am has, so far, never flown on a 787.
Is there a way to choose a particular model plane to fly on?
You can always see the type they plan to use when you book your ticket. They do sometimes change it, but usually not at the last minute, and for a long range route it’s unlikely to change for obvious reasons. The only changes I remember were switches to a smaller aircraft, presumably due to lack of demand, and this was short haul flights booked months out.
The other factor is how many long-haul aircraft types the airline operates. If they only have 787s, you’ll either fly on one or the flight will be cancelled. That’s your sure thing.
If they also have any or all of A330s, A350s, 757s, 767s, or 777s then there’s at least a small chance they could sub one of the others in on short notice (e.g. <24 hours) for whatever reason. Those 5 types are not completely interchangeable w each other nor with the 787, but there is some / lots of overlap in the missions they can perform, albeit not optimally.
As @Riemann points out, which aircraft type is planned for a flight 3+ (or 6+!) months from now is soft. They’d like to hold to the plan, but if planned aircraft deliveries don’t happen, demand fails to materialize, a war starts, etc., well … plans change. This is much less likely to be a problem for flights booked for 2-4 weeks out.
With the relative shortfall in trans-Pacific ops since COVID, some airlines have been using their 787s for domestic hub-to-hub service just to keep the planes and crews busy. In the event of crew or aircraft availability problems, those flights are also subject to substitution by one or occasionally two narrowbody aircraft, A320 series or 737 series.
These sorts of equipment substitution decisions are not made short notice due to passenger load; trying to “rightsize” the aircraft type in real time is too disruptive to everything else to be economically efficient.
But it is the case that if an airplane breaks down someplace and they don’t have any spares, they will tend to substitute a smaller airplane (or cancel) the lowest-booked flight, freeing that plane up to work one of the higher-booked flights.
Although this decision also looks at the rest of the “workday” for that jet. E.g. if it was supposed to fly from Chicago to New York to Los Angeles and is lightly booked with mostly cheap fares to New York, but is fully booked w expensive fares to Los Angeles, better to fly the half-empty plane to New York to position it for the big money flight than to cancel in Chicago, repurpose the jet to other work, and thereby strand the premium NYC-LAX passengers. Unless there’s a spare jet in NY but not in Chicago. It’s 3D chess all the way down.
That link appears to have been created pre-COVID (there’s a lot of start-of-service and end-of-service dates from 2017), so a lot of the routes may have changed in the time since.
You could charter one. Only $31,000 an hour.
I have never been “jet-hunting” but there were certain types I always hankered to fly on. Still looking for an A380 ride.
For those flights, as others pointed out, you can check to see which airlines operate the 787 in their fleet, and book with them. United Airlines does, or did, use the 787 a lot on their Denver-Tokyo or Los Angeles-Tokyo routes, so I rode 787s on those.
That being said, though…IMHO, the 787 is a bit overrated. It was disappointing that the electronic glass dimming didn’t even fully dim the windows. It felt fundamentally no different than any other airliner, except that the cabin had a bit more modernish interior lighting.
One thing you can do is go to a site like FlightAware and search by aircraft type. That will at least give you a general idea where they typically fly. The link below should show you every 787-9 currently in the air.
I don’t have much else to add other than what’s already been said, but I do want to reiterate that if you book a flight really far in advance the aircraft in the schedule might just be a placeholder, and may change by the day of the actually flight.
Back in 2012 I bought a ticket to Australia something like 6 month in advance. I choose Qantas in part because they flew an A380 on the LAX-SYD route, and I wanted to fly on an A380. Except a few months later they changed the scheduled aircraft back to a 747.
Better hurry. Other than at Emirates, they are fast disappearing from the skies.
Delivery problems / delays with new 787s and some Airbus products are causing a very few A380s around the world to be de-mothballed and returned to service. But all the industry pundits expect they won’t last long once their smaller brethren are again rolling smoothly off the assembly lines.
I agree. I flew in a window seat on an overnight flight to Rome and back home on a daytime flight. During a long portion of the flights, they dimmed all the windows, and there was nothing I could do about it. What good is a window seat if you can’t use the window? 
From a passenger POV, besides the fancy slightly larger & high-mounted windows, about all that’s different is the lower cabin altitude at cruise and the greater humidity in the air vs prior generation airliners.
Some small fraction of the traveling public who’re especially sensitive to altitude & dryness can tell the difference; most people can’t. And the effect, to the degree there is one, is greatest on the longest flights. Somebody taking a 787 even coast to coast in the USA is unlikely to notice the difference.
One of the frequent complaints is the windows don’t get dark enough. The nextgen windows coming out now get a LOT darker. So adding to your ire.
I swear that we could cover over all the windows and 90% of the flying public would consider that an improvement. To most everyone, windows are just sources of annoying glare on their device screens.
What, so you can’t control your own window? That seems like a great example of a technological ‘improvement’ that makes for a worse user experience than the manual plastic shutters found on most other airliners. I too enjoy frequent looks out of the window on flights, if I can. If I want to nap/watch a screen and it’s light outside, I can just pull the shutter down - easy.
I haven’t flown long-haul in 7 years, so haven’t had the chance to experience the 787 yet. When I flew to Australia in 2012, I was very pleased to be on a 747 outbound and A380 on the way back. I wanted to like the 747 more as it’s such an iconic plane, but I have to say, the A380 was so much quieter (I never pay for reserved/premium seating so am nearly always sat behind the engines) that it made for a more pleasant flight for that reason alone. I presume the 787 compares very favourably with the 747 in that respect also.
I wanted to fly the 787, and i wanted to fly to Japan, so i booked a direct flight that used a 787.
Japan airlines let me undim the window enough to look out. I would have been REALLY pissed if they’d forced the window off all the time. I liked that it was partially dimmed, because i could look out without blasting light on my sleeping neighbors.
I liked that it wasn’t as dry as most airplanes. I get dehydrated on airplanes. So much so that I’ve been wearing a facemask on long flights for more than a decade to increase the moisture of the air i am breathing. (Yes, i wore masks to increase my comfort. I was dumbfounded by the people who felt it was just impossible to wear a mask due to discomfort.)
I liked the jet well enough. Some of it was how japan airlines set it up. They gave me enough legroom, and didn’t let the person in front of me decline the seat into my knees during times when most people were awake. (They allowed it during “bedtime”. That seemed like a good compromise to me.) I liked that it’s not huge across. I get a little agoraphobic or claustrophobic or something on wide body jets. I think I’m in a minority, but the plane worked for me.
Other than the better air and the funky windows and the slightly better lighting, it’s a fairly ordinary flying experience.
Oh, i also enjoyed the range. Direct flights are nice.
A friend flew to some random spot in the middle of the Pacific, and they only flew 787s there because it was a place where it was really expensive to get jet fuel, and the 787 has enough range to get there and back on one tank.
Oooh! I have also always wanted to fly on a 787, but for a very specific reason: my first job out of grad school was doing the finite element analysis on the 787 pilot controls—mostly, the yoke and the rudder pedals.
I don’t mean to thread-hijack, as it were, but have a related question for LSLGuy and anyone else with an air transport cert/license:
Someday, when I do fly on a 787, I would like to alert the crew about my tiny contribution and ask to view the cockpit post-landing (if the captain and first officer are amenable).
How do I ask such a thing without sounding incredibly suspicious? Is it even possible? For sure, no one owes me that, but it seems like a reasonable question if I can just figure out how to ask it.
Any tips on phrasing, timing or anything else?
Either during boarding or de-boarding just ask the FA’s near the door. On the 787 the cockpit is a bit forward of first class up a short hallway. So you’ll need to get past an FA to get there. “Hi. I worked on the design of part of this airplane. Can I talk to the pilots?” ought to do it. During deboarding some, but not all, pilots will take up a position near the exit door to say “g’buy” to the passengers. Talk to that person if they’re there.
At least at my employer, we’re real receptive to both adults & kids who express any interest in anything. Whether that’s just wanting a photo-op, a war story about your role in aviation, or just “gee-whiz, this is cool.”
We’re not defensive or paranoid. Really. We dig this shit and we love people who dig it with us…
Before 9/11, the pilots would let me sit in the cockpit (as a kid) and give me a little tour of stuff.
We have kids in the cockpit at the gate regularly still. And a few interested or nervous adults. Visitors of any description while enroute ist verboten. But parked at the gate it’s no big deal. Really.
In 1972, on my first plane flight ever (I was five), the pilots let me in the cockpit while flying (during the cruise portion of the flight).
Different times.
My son, who’s now 13, has been on many flights since he was a baby. He has often asked to talk to the pilot and look in the cockpit as we’re boarding. As far as I know he’s never been refused.
Just keep the kids away from the cockpit if Captain Oveur is flying.
Agree. They’re all just large buses for the sky. The on-board service provided by the varying airlines is where the competition is won.