United has better hub cities and a much stronger international route network especially for the tech and finance industries.

In fact, even with smaller J cabins, I’ve found AA to be consistently cheaper than UA for my routings. On many routes, getting an upgrade the week of departure is easy with AA whereas J cabins are fully sold out a week ahead on UA.

That said, as premium as SFO and EWR are, they can’t (yet) hold a candle to London. That’s the reason why BA can fill a 747-400 with 86J/14F seats!

Personally, I think 60J seats on a 77W is too few on many SFO-starting routes, especially SFO-FRA.