Many of us are lamenting the decision to remove First Class seats from many types of aircraft in the fleet. I gave this a lot of thought and realized this was a symptom to the solution to a problem the airline must be facing or expecting.

It is not so much that they are removing First Class seats as they are adding coach seats, thus increasing the overall capacity of the aircraft. The logic would seem to be that there needs to be more capacity on their routes. There are three ways to meet that additional need. ONE – Add flights. TWO – Use bigger planes. THREE – Put more people on the planes you have.

To be fair, I think US does a great job of having many convenient flights thorughout the day. They do, however, make tremendous use of smaller A319/A320/B737 aircraft. Perhaps that’s a problem that’s starting to sting a bit. So, the answer has therefore become, add seats at the cost of comfort and FFer satisfaction.

Is every flight on these routes really that full? Is the load factor for the airline that high right now? It seems that adding seats is a very short-term and minimal solution, if the reasoning is to address increasing capacity to meet soaring demand. Further, additional seats ONLY help if they are full. Adding capacity typically erodes ticket prices and lessens passenger satisfaction. Finally, so many flights are on ‘weight restrictions’ anymore that you have to wonder if they could fill the seats even if they are sold.