Japan Airlines (JAL) on Sunday flew the first scheduled 787 Dreamliner passenger service into the U.S. as it inaugurated service between Tokyo and Boston.

The flight from Japan was just short of 13 hours long. The jet was greeted in Boston Sunday morning by a welcoming delegation including JAL chairman Masaru Onishi. The aircraft took off later Sunday for the first return flight to Tokyo.

The huge marketing success of the mid-size Dreamliner — JAL configures the cabin with 186 seats — was partly driven by the fact that it offers airlines the chance to open new long-distance routes between city pairs that don't have enough traffic to justify putting a bigger jumbo jet in service.

Tokyo-Boston "is exactly the kind of long-haul point-to-point route the 787 was designed to fly," Boeing Japan president Mike Denton, who was on the flight, said in a statement from JAL.

At the departure gate ceremony in Tokyo, JAL President Yoshiharu Ueki said the airline "is making best use of the aircraft's long-range capability, appropriate capacity, and its economic performance," the airline statement said.

Initially, JAL will fly four times a week each way between the two cities.

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com

Information in this article, originally published April 24. 2012, was corrected May 7, 2012 A previous version of this story gave an incorrect duration for the first flight from Japan and also misstated when the return flight took off. The flight time from Tokyo to Boston was 12 hours 43 minutes, and the JAL Dreamliner returned to Tokyo on the same day it arrived.