In the discussion about upgrades, fleets, E+, …. I had a number of impressions that I decided to test.
Upfront disclosure – this is not the only way to look at the data and your reality will be based on what is available on your typical routes.
I have gathered what I hope is valid data on the domestic 2-class fleets of UA & CO that offer UDU/EUA. Please offer corrections, I'm definitely less familiar with CO configs and I will update.
Looked at aircraft that is UDU/EAU eligible – number of seats for each in E-, E+ or ELR (in ELR included bulkhead – author’s choice) and F. Looked up the number of presently flying aircraft and built fleet percentages for E-, E+/ELR and F by aircraft type and total fleet.
This is only mainline aircraft, not regional jets included.
Eliminated PS & domestic BF flights since they are not UDU/EUA eligible.
Domestic 3-class UA flights are not included which would probably increase UA premium cabin averages – too hard to figure out how to add it and there is a chance this will disappear in the future (just a hunch).
Also this is weighted by fleet numbers and not flight frequency. Flight frequencies would probably weight the smaller aircraft more and make some shift in the numbers (I guessing a minor decrease in UA’s F average). These last two items may cancel out a bit.
With the E+ decision made (and probably no need to be further debated here), I will save post#2 for the post E+ conversion data.
In a few cases, I have lumped together slight different configurations of the same aircraft.
Code:
Mainline Type % Type data Type Total
Domestic E- E+/ELR F/C Num E- E+/ELR F/C E- E+/ELR F/C Sums
w/ UDU/EUA
UA fleet 61% 28% 10.5% 255 25,148 11,496 4,288 40,932
A319 60% 33% 6.7% 55 72 40 8 3,960 2,200 440 6,600
A320 65% 26% 8.7% 41 90 36 12 3,690 1,476 492 5,658
A320T 63% 29% 8.3% 56 90 42 12 5,040 2,352 672 8,064
757 59% 27% 13.2% 83 108 50 24 8,964 4,150 1,992 15,106
763 63% 23% 13.9% 14 154 56 34 2,156 784 476 3,416
777 64% 26% 10.3% 6 223 89 36 1,338 534 216 2,088
CO fleet 82% 8% 10.2% 253 32,659 3,060 4,036 39,755
735 88% 5% 7.0% 29 100 6 8 2,900 174 232 3,306
737 81% 10% 9.7% 32 100 12 12 3,200 384 384 3,968
738 83% 8% 10.0% 126 132 12 16 16,632 1,512 2,016 20,160
739 80% 9% 11.6% 45 138 15 20 6,210 675 900 7,785
753 82% 7% 11.1% 21 177 15 24 3,717 315 504 4,536
Observations:
The core domestic fleets of UA & CO are very similar in number of total seats (41K vs 40K) and the number aircraft is also similar (255 vs 253).
The percentage of F seats is essential the same (appears E+ has not meant fewer F seats in UA fleet). The UA fleet has a little wider variation (6.7-13.9% vs 7.0-11.6%) but once weighted for number of aircraft the averages are about the same. (as mentioned, YMMV, per the routing/frequency disclaimers earlier).
All in all thought this was worth sharing (and off to get flack jacket
).
updates
15 April 2011 corrected 735 E- value