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Royal Jordanian, a member of the OneWorld alliance, has a long-haul fleet that, as things stand, is entirely made up of Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners which, to be blunt, don’t offer a particularly great Business Class experience.

In the coming months, however, the airline expects to begin receiving some of the 787-9 Dreamliners that it has on order and a little over a week ago, a set of schedule updates by Royal Jordanian gave us an insight into what routes the new aircraft may fly and what the Business Class cabin layout may look like.

Now, in yet another update, Royal Jordanian has scheduled its new aircraft to operate on the Amman – Chicago route from March next year.

The Royal Jordanian Dreamliners

As things stand, one of the issues with the Royal Jordanian 787-8 Dreamliners is that the Business Class cabin is outdated and doesn’t offer all-aisle-access seating to all passengers.

The cabin seats are set out in a 2-2-2 layout on the Royal Jordanian 787-8s and while that may have been acceptable when the airline first took delivery of these aircraft a little over 10 years ago, it’s not really acceptable now … at least not if the airline wishes to claim that it offers a premium product and if it wishes to charge premium fares.

Fortunately, it looks like things will soon improve as although Royal Jordanian has remained tight-lipped over its plans for its 787-9 cabins, the tentative scheduling of its new Dreamliners on select routes has allowed us to view the planned seat map for the 787-9s and the seat map clearly shows a much-improved cabin.

Crucially (for a premium product), the new Business Class cabin coming to the 787-9 Dreamliners offers a 1-2-1 seating layout and that represents all-aisle-access-seating.

Unfortunately, the seat map doesn’t offer up any more details, so we’re left to speculate what seats Royal Jordanian may offer and one of the more logical guesses we can make is that the seats will be from Collins Aerospace (given that Royal Jordanian already uses Collings Aerospace seats) and set out in a reverse herringbone pattern (given that’s the layout of a lot of the Collins Aerospace seats we see in other Business Class cabins (e.g. on some American Airlines 787-9 Dreamliners, on Etihad’s A350s and on Air Canada’s 787-9 Dreamliners).

If this turns out to be correct (and it may not), this will represent a big improvement in what Royal Jordanian has to offer (especially as the airline is expected to retrofit the new cabin into its 787-8 as well).

Chicago to get the new Business Class cabin (hopefully)

While it’s well worth noting that airline schedules can change quite significantly between the seasons, it looks like Chicago may be getting some 787-9 service from Royal Jordanian next year.

Up until now, the only cities set to see the new Royal Jordanian Dreamliner have been Bangkok, Istanbul, and Paris, and only on a very limited number of dates.

Now, however, Chicago has entered the fray with Royal Jordanian scheduling its new aircraft to operate the Amman – O’Hare route one day per week from the beginning of the 2026 northern hemisphere summer season.

From 26 March 2026, this is what the Amman – Chicago route schedule looks like:

RJ263 AMM 10:55 – 16:05 ORD 787-8 service (Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat, & Sun)
RJ263 AMM 10:55 – 16:05 ORD 789-9 service (Thu)

RJ264 ORD 19:50 – 15:40+1 day AMM 789-9 service (Thu)
RJ264 ORD 19:50 – 15:40+1 day AMM 787-8 service (Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat, & Sun)

[HT: AeroRoutes]

At the time of writing, the schedule shown above is set to stay in place through to the end of the current booking period so, assuming nothing changes between now and next year, it looks like Royal Jordanian plans to keep the 787-9 operating on its Chicago route for some time (i.e. this isn’t simply a brief stint during which crew will be getting orientated with the aircraft).

Bottom line

Royal Jordanian has scheduled one of its soon-to-be-delivered Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners to operate one day a week on its Chicago route from 26 March 2026.

Given that this aircraft is expected to come with a new and much upgraded Business Class cabin, this is good news for OneWorld fans wishing to fly between the Midwest and the Middle East.

Featured image: Royal Jordanian 787-8 Dreamliner.