Originally Posted by
zorn
Part of flexible J is, well, flexibility. I think if they have 5 round trips per day someplace that sustains a J cabin at all, it should aim to have seats available for the person purchasing flexible J to be able to: a) buy the flight they want; b) SDC pretty much always; and c) probably clear standby more often than not.
Being full for 5 of their next 15 flights isn't really giving the flexible J traveler all that much flexibility. I would be disappointed as that traveler trying to get on the flight I want when paying the largest possible premium.
If it's not an anomaly for some particular event, I still think this suggests a lack of capacity on the route. Giving AC the benefit of the doubt, I have to assume it's because they will make even more money somewhere else with the aircraft.
The J seats won't go out empty. They'll be backfilled with upgrades - probably a tough upgrade to get unless you're a high-value customer to begin with.
(Note: I am not an airline executive so I might not know what I'm talking about.)
It’s an interesting point though about how they may or may not view the economics and value prop of J
On one hand I would look at these loads with delight (assuming few eUpgrades). Great, we’re selling out our premium cabin and have pretty strong sales in Y.
On the other it does indeed diminish the flexibility of the ticket. Am I leaving money on the table because people are booking OAL which offer more capacity? (And these purchasing decisions are a lot more difficult to see through the data)
Looking at the loads, it doesn’t look like the challenge is insufficient overall capacity - J space on 66% of the next 15 flights and Y space on 100%.
I suspect the challenge with this is the same as why I think AC hasn’t increased the size of the PE cabins because, while you almost always see O0 on TPAC / TATL, those same aircraft also need to serve markets where PE is in low demand.
European airlines “solved” this problem with euro business, giving themselves capacity flexibility (albeit with a materially worse product).
Without changing the fleet, couldn’t AC explore this through pricing? If they open up fewer D/Z/P on SFO-YYZ, they will theoretically sell fewer seats, meaning that more flights will have check in open with J1. If they find the right balance here, they might still sell all of the seats on the plane with LMU/SDC, at the expense of a couple of business lowest fares.