Originally Posted by
boosman
1. I didn't think I'd get a middle seat. Long story, but I can't make reservations through the AS site -- I have to go through my corporate site and it's difficult to know exactly what the status of the flight is. I was hopeful there would be F seats available, but no. Also, my corporate site places a needless SSR into my reservations that causes exit row to appear unavailable to me unless I call AS myself.
2. I've been choosing UA much more than AS this year -- I'm at 61K BIS miles on UA, about 18K BIS miles on AS. And that includes lots of travel to MCO where it would be much faster to go AS.
3. I'd argue that the only two things UA is doing really well right now are E+ and the new F/C international cabins (which are far and away the best of any USA carrier). Leaving aside F/C and focusing domestically for a moment, if they got rid of E+, they'd have zero differentiation. I talk to other 1Ks on a regular basis who say that the availability of upgrades and E+ as a fallback is what keeps them coming back.
I don't doubt that their E+ is very attractive to their frequent flyers. I just wonder whether it actually does anything for their bottom line. So far, other airlines have tried to offer more room in coach in various cabin layouts. It hasn't worked for any airline, and UA seem to be heading down the same path that Pan Am, Eastern and TWA all went. Despite it's attractiveness to the United Mileage Plus members, it doesn't seem to be making a difference to their bottom line. My thought is that Alaska could use valuable real estate on their aircraft to offer this product but it hasn't seemed to make money for those airlines that have offered it in the past on their domestic product.