mduell

I'd expect they will target reductions in E+, although on some oddball airframes they may end up expanding E+ if that's how the math works out between the fixed structures (doors, etc).

mduell

AA only covers about 10% of UA's longhaul (I picked 7h block time as my cutoff) routes; DL only covers about 5%. So unless you do some domestic connecting in Y, there's not much head to head here.

halls120

Fair enough. But with AA, AC, AF, BA, CX, DL, LH, NH, SG and SK all offering a real PE, there is virtually nowhere I expect to fly that puts me in the position of not having a PE alternative.

mduell

Even those carriers combined cover about a third of UA's longhaul routes.

halls120

75% of my long haul travel is TATL, 20% is TPAC, 5% other. Over the past 20 years, most of my international flights have been on UA. That said, there hasn't been a single destination I've flown to that is served exclusively by UA. If I can't get there on a *A flight (where almost all the carriers offer PE), I can get there on a OW or ST partner, most who have true PE.

I've enjoyed my time with UA, and hope to see my first Polaris hard product some day. But until they bring the A350 on board, my Y flying on UA will decrease at the same rate they convert the 772s to 10 across.

goodeats21

You are not including connections in that, correct? Just hub flights?

So anyone not flying out of a hub, or willing to take a short domestic hop, have vastly more choice in getting long-haul PE.

fly18725

I think there will be fewer E+ seats than today, but still many more extra legroom seats than offered by AA or Delta on their widebody aircraft.

I don't think Delta will retrofit PE into 767s. They haven't even announced firm plans to retrofit A330-200/300s.

So, for the foreseeable future, Delta will only offer PE on A350s, 777s, and (presumably) A330neos.

spin88

This is clearly the hub-captive thought process that animates United's management, its the old CO DNA...

But this is the reality. For about 80% of the traffic in the US, options are about equal. On can take DL/AA/UA or a foreign carrier.

But even ex-SFO, there is not a single overseas trip I have taken EVER where United did not have competition direct competition, and usually there are more than 2 airlines flying the route. (e.g. LHR, NRT, HKG).

EmailKid

Beat me to it.

And to ADD, AA and DL are only adding PE to longhaul planes, and except OD traffic pax will have to connect (and have a choice).

Even when I flew out of CO superhub at IAH there was almost always a connection. Even the few years when I flew for work (OK, I was starting my switch from CO to UA via flights on US), and that was ALL domestic (even my one and only work trip to Canada - they made me fly to Spokane and rent a car from there )

Kmxu

This thread has been very quiet recently. Someone on another thread claimed that United would offer PE in 2018 (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/28821349-post99.html). If the claim is true, the number of E+ seats on widebody will be reduced. I can assume that GPU upgrade to business will be kept. I would guess that the unsold PE seats would go to the high-fare Premier members regardless their status.
Happy speculating!

sbm12

Maybe. Maybe only for some fare classes. Maybe not at all.
I doubt this.

It will be sold as a separate cabin if it happens. The occasional OpUp may come along but I wouldn't expect that to be frequent.

I do agree it likely that the product will be rolled out. Has to happen for the company to remain competitive. A shame it missed on the 77Ws.

jsloan

OK, here are my speculations:

1 - I hope that GPU from Y to J would be permitted, but I have severe doubts. I expect that GPUs will be one-class upgrades only. I further expect that discount PE will not be eligible for GPU upgrades. I don't think they'll announce it all at once; they'll wait until they have PE across more of the plane before they start to cut back benefits. Watch what DL and AA do.

2 - I doubt that there will be CPUs to PE seats. They will do op-ups if necessary, and those will probably go first by status and then by fare, as they do today. The mantra will be, "if you want PE, buy PE."

3 - I expect that they will introduce PE awards, and, within 2-3 years, there will be a *A PE award class. The number of miles needed for J awards will increase when the PE awards are made available.

Basically, PE represents a return to three-class service. If you ignore the name and think of PE as "business class" and J as "first class," I think that you have a pretty good idea of what the future will be.

ermintrude

Drastically reduced... it will cause problems with booking close in for E+ and SDC etc - Also, I'm guessing that golds will lose E+ until checkin (but I think that will happen anyway).

Let's see - I'll give it 50/50 that the current upgrade instrument formula remains the same after PE is rolled out.

bigboy

Actually, I would expect PE to siphon demand from Polaris Business and see an equal reduction (or more) of Polaris than E+.

RandomBaritone

I'd go further and wager that PE will entirely replace E+ on internationally-configured planes. It would be impossible to maintain both for marketing purposes -- otherwise you'd have passengers confusing the two.

Of course E+ will remain as-is on domestically-configured aircraft, so I'd imagine Gold access at booking will be unchanged on those routes.

Nope, not gonna happen. The whole point of Polaris was that it maintained the exact same cabin density as BF. They'd never shrink the cabin size based on mere speculation that PE might sell better.