Originally Posted by
FlyHighInTheSky
It's a bummer they couldn't include any of the DC airports. I would have thought that DCA-SFO would have gotten it at the very least. I suppose it has to do with frequency though and available airframes.
Any speculation on whether this will expand to DC in the future (maybe when the MoM comes online)?
Surprised it took until post 48 for this to come up. Given IAD - SFO is hub-hub, you'd think they'd want to include this route. Maybe in the future, but they don't have the fleet for it now?
Originally Posted by
PaulInTheSky
Matching DL, not bad. That gives a reason for any elites on E+ to have the hot food plus the free food item+drink. That's the way to appreciate the elites and people who pay for the E+. Pretty well done.
I think the issue they have is that E- and E+ basically looks like one cabin. Without a curtain or something between E+ and E-, I think you are going to see complaints from passengers in the row behind E+ asking why the people 1 row ahead of them get a free meal, while they don't.
Exit rows could be an issue, though I haven't flown the 757s in a while - are there any E- seats forward of the exit door - maybe not and this becomes a minimal issue, but especially problematic if you skip a couple of rows, and then serve free food/drinks to folks.
Originally Posted by
kseaflyr
What will be interesting to see is:
1) If UA does decide to follow Delta in making E+ (C+) a separate class of service
2) How this will play out given UA (in general) has far more E+ seats per plane. My thought is that this plays into Kirby's recent statement - i.e. remove E+ seating and add more E-
Maybe, or maybe they continue to use it to their advantage. We are talking at least in this thread in particular about three business-heavy routes at the moment - I'd guess ones where E+ is typically full with elites/those willing to pay for it. Other routes might make more sense. But they already did this on CR7 fleet a few years ago - almost half of economy (IIRC) used to be E+ (and IME, still, at least on my routes, have zero trouble getting E+, though I usually book at least 2-3 weeks in advance).
Originally Posted by
milypan
The strongest argument in favor of UA retaining easier access to E+ than DL does for C+ is that UA's ratio of E+ to E- seats is higher than DL's (or pretty much any other US airline).* Thus we might expect "looser" access on UA than other carriers. I would nevertheless expect some kind of tightening in the future...at least get rid of 8 companions if nothing else.
UA still has a ton more extra legroom seats, so I'd guess they can afford to be looser - assuming they keep this advantage. If they shrink the cabins to the size of DL/AA, then that argument goes away, of course.
Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
So what happens if there is a multiple companion PNR with more than one elite. For example, I normally travel with 2 others - 2 golds and our 2yo daughter who has no status since we just started getting her own seats. Maybe I wasn't interpreting the DL site correctly, but I got the impression that in this scenario, you can't have all 3 upgraded - just 2. Is that correct?