Originally Posted by
DWFI
Speculating, it is also possible that AA knows they will never sell F and knows that 30 seats is too many, and they're merely using this as an experiment (because they have no spare 75Ls) to test revenue premiums in the J cabin on the route to explore viability of a 321 16J subfleet for this route and others (JFK-SAN/SEA/LAS, etc).
They sell F, but I don't think anybody ever buys it. Ancedotal I know, but my experience on taking AA2542 five times and AA211 twice since this plane showed up on the route:
All 7 flights I was upgraded to J at 100 hours (more like 104 usually for some reason). All 7 times all 20 seats in J showed occupied a few hours before departure, and all 7 times there were two or frewer seats assigned in F.
Expertflyer showed F7 J7 Y7 - so they were willing to oversell an already full J cabin by at least the number of seats available in F.
Rollups on this route have been 100% for me.
Today, 8 J pax (I don't know the breakdown of purchased versus upgrades or 12 month REQD if it matters, but I'm EXP upgraded from Y with a REQD of just over $36k) were rolled to F, 5 pax were upgraded off of the waitlist into J, and 4 very lucky people who didn't have seat assignments at all in Y were op-upped into J and F. For all I know, they were on BE fares.
If they made a 24J, 36MCE, 48Y version of the A321T, that would hit the sweet spot for this route. F is functionally no different than J aside from the food offferings and a slightly more private seat - not worth the premium. This A321T2 would also be able to turn BOS/DCA/IAD/MIA/PHL/JFK-LAX/SAN/SFO/SEA into actual Flagship Transcon routes.