Originally Posted by
mitchmu
The long term trend for UA is to cut F and go with J only in front. With that as a given, let's assess the options.
For long-haul aircraft: What would be the pro's and con's of adding 6 rows of premium economy, then cutting a few rows of E+ and a few rows of E- to make up the difference?
Elites who want to pay Y can still get E+. Kettles still have E- at cheapest possible price. They can sell the Y(Premium) to some people at a higher price. They can peddle up-sell offers to everyone to get into Y(Premium). And, what they don't sell, they can upgrade elites from E+ to Y(Premium) for, say, half the miles it would cost to UG into J.
Seems to me this has something beneficial for everyone.
This logic makes great sense to me, and many FTers I suspect, but I doubt it would fly with the current UA management team.
Remember how everyone from 1K's to credit card holders got put into 'Group 1' for boarding priority and the resulting chaos? When one of our number had an audience with Martin Hand, I believe, a year or so ago, he was told that there were too many gradations in the pmUA status hierarchy to treat them all differently. So it was just GS at the apex, and all the rest of MP categories lumped together (except perhaps silver, which became the new no-status).
This suggests to me that UA would resist further differentiation of its cabins into E-, E+, Y Premium, and J. They are happy to differentiate dynamic pricing for everything they can, but not to differentiate the actual services that are offered. The KISS principle will keep a true premium Y from happening, unless perhaps it's just bundling a drink and a snack in with E+.