Originally Posted by
Bay Area Blue
One thing I must say about this is that yes, it would be a nice option for the customer. As I have stated before AS is trying to balance being a great airline providing great customer service, schedules, product, etc. while being a business at the same time with emphisis on profit share for the share holders. I also agree as others have posted that the AS market is primarily short flights, 2.5 hours or less, so an E+ section doesn't make as much sense as it would on long haul flights.
We often forget that the bread/butter of this airline is Alaska, with a huge domination of the ANC (and FAI) / SEA market (approx. 3.5 hours), with no real competition. It makes absolutely no economic sense for AS to do anything to reduce profit in this captive audience, and since the "master plan" is apparently as much fleet commonality as possible with 738s, there has to be a compromise in how the aircraft is configured.
If they really want to dump 1 FA per flight, and don't want to mess with the general cabin layouts, adding a quasi-premium Y section, etc., simply remove a few seats and add another row of F. Upgrade odds go up substantially, they can sell another couple of F seats on the transcons, blah blah blah.