Originally Posted by
VegasGambler
Sure, I know that, for example, AA does that very aggressively. They really don't want you in that 3-class lie-flat if you didn't pay for it.
I was talking about routes where an airline has a mix of premium and non-premium equipment. For example, SFO-OGG, SFO-LIH, or SFO-HNL on UA -- they have some planes with lie-flats in F, but also many that don't. Their published fares are all good for all the flights on those routes. You can also connect on those flights very cheaply from some places. Fun fact: on UA, a SFO-YVR round trip, with a YVR-SFO-OGG round trip nested inside, all in P, can be about the same total price ($1300 or so) as SFO-OGG round trip in P. That's a lot of miles, if you're into that sort of thing)
They could also restrict it by, say, zeroing out P and/or Z (bottom two first class codes) inventory on the seats with lie-flats, but I haven't seen that either. I booked a round trip SFO-OGG on a 752 with P in both directions, and SFO-HNL on a 772 with P in one direction and Z in the other, with no real issues finding space on the equipment I wanted (the hard part was researching which equipment I wanted and filtering accordingly)
AS is the same -- they may mix Airbus and/or Boeing and/or Embraer on some routes but they don't charge a premium for different equipment.
Isn’t UA flying lie flat F to Hawaii mostly an operational consideration, where it simply makes sense for them to route an internationally configured bird to Hawaii on certain flights and/or seasonally for a variety of reasons, largely related to fleet utilization and capacity (of course with ETOPS constraints)? I don’t know UA well, but certainly that’s the case with AA. When you get a lie flat seat on a route that doesn’t always have it, it’s marketed and priced as domestic First (or regional Business in the case of Caribbean flights). AS using Airbus planes in the VX configuration is basically the same but the fleet is the way it is for a different reason.
As with transcons, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take advantage of it when you can. But UA isn’t making fleet or pricing decisions based on putting lie flat seats on Hawaii flights (or any flights other than the premium transcons and long haul international), are they? Of course, AS has no long haul configurations, so in the long term they won’t have a better F product getting subbed in for operational reasons.