Originally Posted by
sltlyamusd
I’m only talking about the VX F seating, which is still in place on about 95% of legacy Airbus fleet AS acquired. My point was more that paid F on a former VX bird was a much better value than on an AS 737, because AS did not appear to charge a price premium for F on 320 over 737. Thus, the OP would have been better off booking on an Airbus for the transcon. But that argument will be less compelling as more and more planes get reconfigured.
It's not really uncommon to not charge a premium for better seating. On UA, flying to Hawaii, they have some lie-flat equipment and some non-lie-flat equipment. The same fares with the same rules apply to all of them. AS is the same -- I've never seen a fare with equipment limitations.
I actually stopped paying for F after the merger, even on airbus planes. I bought one round trip to Maui in F post-merger, and I was not happy with it, so I only paid for economy after that. The seat was still great on the airbus but the service was not there any more. Basically, AS turned me from a first-only flyer to an economy-only flyer for a year, and now I'm looking elsewhere for F (since economy on long flights kind of sucks).
I've had much better service on UA in F; they are now where I spend my F dollars. They are convenient out of SFO too. AS will get my short flights in economy (eg SFO-PDX) where service and product don't really matter, maybe the occasional long flight where I can apply a GGU (I will take AS F if it's cheap enough), but mostly AS will be a piggy bank for accumilating miles when flying partners.