Your explanation makes the most sense. I knew 1,000nm was way too high.
It does bother me, however, that US didn't just adopt a 900mi threshold like UA/DL in the first place. At least then, they would be aligning themselves to UA/DL, and presumably so, AA would too in September. I hope that's the final endgame,
if not retaining AA's current 2:00 thresholds by September. 1000mi would leave out quite a lot of markets.
Any takers why a 900mi threshold was not initially adopted?
Originally Posted by
dtremit
Everyone keeps saying this, but I don't believe it's true.
The only evidence we had of a 1000nm rule was a single leaked internal communication from months before the change. Even if it was accurate at the time -- which hasn't been confirmed -- the details may well have changed afterwards.
Nearly all of the routes with new meal service are under 1000nm -- e.g., CLT-SAT has meal service but is 951nm. And a 1000nm flight would be closer to 3:15 than 2:45; as an example, PHX-SEA is 962nm and ranges betwen 2:59 and 3:10.
So what happened? I think there are two good possibilities:
1) The rule shifted to 2:45 before it rolled out, and service is based on the shortest flight on a given route.
2) The rule is actually 1000 statute miles, and the leaked memo was simply typed wrong.
The problem with #1 is that PHL-MSP is never under 2:45 -- so there would be no reason to list it as an exception. Therefore, I'm going to theorize that 1000mi is the actual rule implemented on 4/1.