I'm very interested in how you have found the 777 from the perspective of handling qualities, intuitiveness of response, and easy of maintaining situational awareness. I would imagine that your exposure to the 777 protection functions has been limited to time in the simulator, but I wonder if you have any comments on the overspeed, underspeed/stall, and bank angle protection functions.
Having been on the aircraft for 12 years now and with experience across 777-200 and -300 models I have to say I absolutely love it. I came across from the 757/767 and it was an easy conversion.
Handling qualities - A pleasure to fly! Config changes, particularly the likes of Flap 20 deployment are much easier with the lack of resultant pitch input requirements. Pitch up during turns becomes instantly intuitive and overall hand flying the aircraft is an absolute pleasure. I do a lot of hand flying around various caribbean destinations including visual approaches from 30K regularly and they are a pleasure to fly. As for intuitiveness of response there is nothing to say negatively which speaks volumes.
I am firmly a "Child of the Magenta line" and as long as you are professional and rigorous in your approach to FMC changes etc. then I personally don't feel that my SA is lower in this aircraft than any other I have flown. What you do have to be careful of is FMA mode changes. FMA awareness is fairly critical along with a broad knowledge of the traps (FLCH/Throttle hold trap in visual approaches etc.).
My only real experience of the protections was a bank angle exceedance avoiding a 737 which had decided to go for the same gap between two Cu clouds that I was heading for. All I felt whilst visually manoeuvring quite hard was a firm but insistent nudging in roll on the control column which communicated what was happening to me without any requirement to look at the PFD. Ideal solution if you ask me.
The other thing that sells the aircraft to me is the TAC (Thrust Asymmetry Compensation for non-triple drivers) which puts the rudder in automatically in the event of an engine failure, or ANY instance of asymmetric thrust. It comes in to its own flying single engine circuits. With the TAC and the flight path vector to indicate level flight on the PFD they are an absolute breeze.
I'm down for a job introducing the 787 into my company and can't wait to see what the difference is between the two.