Originally Posted by
Carl Johnson
It feels like a deliberate insult. We only ever got seats that nobody else was going to buy; except on flights that are lightly loaded with elites and without many paying passengers, upgrades cleared within 30 minutes or less before boarding. For JFK-SEA, they have a fair number of upgrades because the tickets are overpriced. Lots of times they fill up around half the J cabin. $2000 seems to be too much for that route. Maybe this was a reaction to not selling as many seats as they thought they were going to sell? But taking the seats away from us isn't going to help them to sell more; we only took the seats nobody else wanted. If the seats aren't going to sell for $2000 they're not going to sell for $2000. So they're going to let seats go out empty - why?
Maybe the next step is to lower fares a bit on those routes so they can fill more of the BE cabin with paid BE fares. I guess this might be called BE Monetization, but I've never used the expression FCM because people on this forum use "monetization" like it's a dirty word. Of course they're monetizing it, that's the product they sell.
Option 2 is to start selling gate UGs.
If I'm wrong and they don't plan to adjust fares to fill the cabin with paid BE tickets or sell gate UGs, I guess it'll be employee class like int'l F is on many *A airlines.