Originally Posted by bhrubin

From friends who work at UA, there are still plenty of customers willing to pay for F in certain routes--usually the "corporate" or "big money" routes out of EWR, IAD, and SFO, and to a lesser extent ORD, according to me friend. I was surprised LAX didn't join that group, but that is apparently one reason why LAX has been reduced in favor of SFO for UA. (Which bums me out as I live in SoCal!)

Clearly, American tastes and customs are different in terms of these extravagances compared to those in Asia, the Middle East, and even parts of South America--places with longer histories of significant wealth disparity where there always have been a solid group of super-rich. That is why American carriers offer less extravagance compared to counterpart carriers in those other regions...and even why European carriers offer less extravagance in comparison or in the same volume.

But you are incorrect in assuming that UA's value proposition for F is so different. UA doesn't put as much extravagance in its F compared to its Asian/Middle Eastern counterparts, but its F product is as good if not slightly better (and far more available) than that of AA (with just 14 planes offering it) and DL (since they don't even offer true international F). So UA is competitive for these F paying customers COMPARED to AA and DL. It's a big American market, and they get a large piece of that pie. It's also a nice perk to offer their GS and most elite customers (upgrade to F from J, Sir or Madame?), which helps keep some of those elites and GS happy with UA compared to foreign airlines.

Everyone forgets that US rich can't fly frequently on a foreign carrier unless they ALWAYS fly to the same region--as the Asian carriers don't serve the USA to Europe and the Gulf/European carriers don't serve the USA to Asia. Sometimes, the US carriers are the better way to go for corporate contracts, and these permit UA to continue to offer F (for the time being at least).

With less competition for premium F offerings, the Asian and Gulf carriers win for their offering. Well, with AA and DL giving up on F offerings on their networks, UA is actually better positioned among THOSE as the only US carrier still offering a F product on most routes (again, for the time being). That does help UA in the absence of competition from AA and DL.