Originally Posted by
omaralt
you think there worried about optics? They didn’t seem worried about it when they introduced BE. “United now charges you to select a seat”
Yes, I do. UA was able to hand-wave BE as an "enhancement" to give people extra "choice." It would be much more difficult to market "families can't buy BE" as anything but a fare increase -- and that's even assuming that they have age information for all passengers. (Hint: they don't, necessarily, until the deadline for transmission of the Secure Flight data).
Trust me, no matter how bad you think the optics of BE were originally, they'd have been much, much worse if they appeared to be discriminating against families.