Originally Posted by
spin88
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This is the point of doing market testing, BEFORE making a decision. United instead went with this seat, and then did a marking roll-out to elites. So far (see the comments) it has not gotten rave reviews. This is a major investment and if it does not work out, will cause real damage to United, damage that United can't afford at this point where it is already trailing badly in revenue. I don't blame Oscar for this, this project was a cheapo-top down Jeffed-up special, but that UA's product people are as several posters noted "nervous" about what they are doing, is not a good sign....
I have to think they did some market research and focus groups before selecting the final seat design - the question is who did they do this research with? I can't recall if anyone from our community was involved, although they might be under a NDA if they were.
Unfortunately the ship has probably sailed on this one - while they can tweak the food, they can't tweak the seat at this point without a major delay in the rollout which would blunt any impact on the market, and substantial cost - what could they do now, cancel the seat order and go after the new DL seats? I don't think even Oscar has the guts to do that, even if the market wanted the change - even if this was Smisek's choice, today's management would look like fools if they tried to change the seat at this point.
Either way, Polaris is better than any variant of BF, so it's not like we're going backwards - the only problem is the potential for the competition leapfrogging too far ahead, although with ongoing softening in business travel, a cloudy global economic lookout, extreme risk in China, and uncertainty in Europe, will there really be enough paying customers left to even care?