Originally Posted by
Unimatrix One
With respect to all this "premium service never works in the US market" stuff, I just want to point out that one of the key features of CO's turnaround and business model was offering better service than other airlines, including (gasp) meals in Y. And their domestic F (which I experienced a few times) was excellent. Gordon Bethune explained this in detail in his book. I once flew CO in J on a TPAC flight in 1999, and the soft product (food and amenities) far exceeded anything on any US carrier today and came close to today's SQ, NH, and JL.
Also, before Doug Parker degraded AA's product (slashing meals and shrinking MCE), wasn't AA earning higher RASM?
AA was also exiting Chapter 11. Given what Wall Street thinks of AA performing right now, Doug Parker coming back as CEO to replace Robert Isom, who is completely in over his head and I have to wonder does he know what he's doing, would actually be an improvement. Yes, I am serious on that as Parker did reverse cutbacks when he realized they went to far, i.e. he cut meals for like a month on DCA-MIA in favour of Dougie's bag of delights, that got immediate negative feed whereas Isom has no clue on where this airline is going other than America West lite.
Bringing it back to United, the change, which reportedly had some strong dissent at Willis Tower, matched UA to AA/DL on meal window of 900 miles and no exceptions. I would have been certain that routes like LAX-DEN/DEN-ORD, which always had meals served no matter what, would be introduced as exceptions but nope. Race to the bottom for all three.