Originally Posted by transportprof

I may be mis-remembering, but one of the reports of the audience with Martin Hand contained language that went beyond the 'over-entitled elites' issue and said something to the effect of 'you can't run an airline that treats so many different classes of elites differently'. What I took from that paraphrase is the idea that UA management in its current incarnation does not want to run an airline that is overly complicated.

While I accept your claim that greed drives most of the senior management's decision logic, I would also suggest that concern about capability to execute lies behind some of the lowering of expectations and standards since the merger got into gear. KISS is on the minds of the C suite, not just because they want bigger bonuses, but also because they don't trust their 'co-workers' to be able to deliver multiple levels of service well. The ghost of People Express still floats above the new UA, and I think that premium Y is unlikely to become a part of this company, unless it arrives as a replacement for domestic F.

That's kind of what *A's European members have done with their short and medium haul flights, although they still call the service 'Business.' Take away the lounge access and priority check-in, and you've got premium Y, essentially.