This is silly. First Class is not going anywhere - VX, Spirit, AirTran and soon jetBlue will be LCC carriers with F cabins, although offering a varying degree of service enhancements. If the LCC competition is adding the product, what in the world could make anyone think that legacies carriers would remove it?

First Class and elite benefits are the only remaining product differentiators between most of the airlines - take these items away and customers WILL make their flight selections based only on price and schedule.

The goal is driving more incremental revenue into the F cabin by making it easier for people who must book coach to buy-up into F - for example, my company buys my DL coach ticket and I give them the small fare difference to re-issue into the F cabin.