Originally Posted by Driving by DCA

I can never decide whether threads like this are light trolling or just I'll-informed.

But, here's what you would know if you had investigated both the UA board and the CO board fully regarding premium seating arrangements:

• No one knows what the final premium cabin plan for the new UA will be. Guesses range from all three-class to all two class with a mid-point of a mixed fleet as AA and many international carriers have gone to that system.
• The seats you flew on the UA 777 are the previous generation C product. All UA 747 and 767 aircraft now have the new C seats which are fully flat and very similar to the new BF product. If you had flown a UA 767 and a CO 767, you would be making the exact opposite argument as most (all?) CO 767s still have the older BF seats.
• Just as CO is working on updating its 767 aircraft with the new BF seats, UA is converting its 777 aircraft to its new premium product. Approx. one in ten UA 777s now have flat beds in C and the rest are scheduled for updating.

So the answer to your overall question is that you flew one of an increasingly scarce set of examples of the older UA C product. Before the merger ever happened, both UA and CO were moving to a fully flat C product across their long-haul fleets and regardless of what other decisions are made in the merger, it is definite that all of their unconverted planes will be converted to some form of fully flat seat in the premium cabin(s).