ashill

As Gary says, it's hard to imagine this being anything other than a DL clone: make the MCE seats a separate fare class (W) and possibly provide some extra soft product. There's no room I can see for a hard product between MCE and domestic F.

It does make sense from the point of view of connections to international W; an international W fare would obviously book into domestic W as well and thus get MCE seats. I don't know if AA's technology is capable of assigning a MCE seat at no charge on a domestic coach ticket connecting from international W; do they do that currently (with partner-operated W)?

Personally, I have very little desire for any enhanced soft product domestically. The hard product is what I care about, and I won't be happy if/when this involves paying for an enhanced soft product I don't want in order to get the hard product I want. But I presume that AA's goal is to leverage that to get more for MCE seats than they currently do, as well as allow revenue management to limit the freebie MCE for elites so they can sell it to non-elites (as Delta does). This isn't a surprise, but I'm not wild about it.

Now, if AA is doing something different and rebranding the current domestic F as premium economy (since it's essentially the same seat as international premium economy), that's a change I could see the logic of (though it would hurt in terms of EQM earning for those who purchase F). But I highly doubt that.