I flew on NH 7871, the ANA inaugural commercial Boeing 787 flight in October from Tokyo to Hong Kong. It was a fantastic experience and the aircraft was a pleasure to fly on -- spacious, quiet, with huge bins that seem to disappear into the ceiling. But most noticeable of all, from a passenger perspective, are the huge windows. Even from the middle of the plane, you can see far out. I compared it to having veranda views.
BUT. This Reuters story today comes as no surprise. 787 launch customer ANA is reportedly considering putting blinds on those high-tech windows because their dimmer feature does not make them dark enough. I can see the problem. Our return flight to Tokyo was in the early evening. There was a sunset as we climbed out of Hong Kong and those windows provided spectacular viewing. But even with the dimmer mechanism at its darkest, light filters through. The effect is rather like putting on sunglasses. If you are a long-haul passenger wanting to get some shut-eye, that could be annoying.
My other observation was that the dimmer feature -- it's operated by a touch button under each window -- could be prone to failure. On those inaugural flights, intrigued passengers spent lots of time pushing the dimmer button up, down; up, down. I imagine it's going to be the same over and over again on every flight, so those buttons and dimmers will be severely tested.
Some of us onboard NH 7871 joked that it wouldn't be long before this high-tech plane might end up with very low-tech curtains at each window, like the classic airliners of the decades past. Now it looks like that may not be such a far-fetched idea.