Whether or not E+ is coming to CO, I have no idea.

But here are a few points to make about E+:

1. In 2007, Glenn Tilton announced that E+ had generated over $100 million in incremental revenue for UAUA in 2006 (http://www.united.com/speech/detail/...,58617,00.html). This is before UA attempted to generate revenue from this product in a serious fashion.

By 2007, UAUA announced that its "options" program, which includes E+ (and other buy-up products) was generating $220 million in incremental revenue (http://www.united.com/speech/detail/...,59128,00.html).

In 2008, that figure had increased to over $300 million, but I am unable currently to find the url for this release

2. B6 has a similar product, which is calls Even More Legroom (EML). This consists of 4 rows of seats with 38" of seat pitch (comparable to the seat pitch on most domestic FC in the U.S.). This is a buy-up only program. B6 reports it earns $40 million from this product:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...ssengers_N.htm

3. These type of E+ products consist of ordinary economy products with additional legroom as the only extra amenity.

For those of us who have flown E+ or EML, one of the issues is "seat jumpers" who sneak into one of these seats from an adjacent E- row when the f/a is not looking .

4. This is different from Premium Economy, which is available on a number of international carriers. Premium Economy is basically a type of business class lite. It's a separate product, usually with its own cabin, better catering, etc.

PE varies in terms of comfort an amenities, but it's often quite a bit more costly than even the full Y fare.

Premium Economy is currently available on:

AF, NZ, NH, BA, BR, JL, KL, QF, SK, TG, VA, and VS. Some of these carriers feature PE on only one a/c type, on others it's available on their entire longhaul fleet.

5. Were CAL to add E+, they would almost certainly not take out any FC. It would not only be much easier and cheaper to remove rows of Y, but keeping the full inventory of FC, allows the carrier to keep the high-yield FC inventory and/or F inventory for FC. Since CAL already flies with FC virtually always full, there would not appear to be any reason to remove FC rows.

When B6 modified its A-320's to include its EML section, the changeover was made in about 2 days per a/c, during standard maintenance.

6. Knowing how desirous CAL is of not losing seats, E+ could be added on its domestic fleet by increasing E+ pitch to 34" and reducing E- pitch to 29" (which already exists on a number of other U.S. carriers). This would be a mixed blessing, obviously.