jaysona

This is no surprise, the topic was initially raised last October, looks like 2Q2017 wasn't too far off the mark.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...ow-body-j.html

Completely agree. I find it humorous but not unsurprising that people will book one airline over another where both airlines offer pretty much the same hard and soft product, but one airline calls it "First" class instead of business class.

Another great example of the meek minded being taken in hook, line and sinker by marketing.

Transpacificflyer

Gosh, I barely recall the term Connaisseur, and you caused me to do a search.

How much smaller could they make J? It's already 3-4 rows. if they went to 2 rows, the dedicated FA would be lost. Service is a bit slow as it is.

I expect that the sold J is in respect to connections, so I do understand why some will always be sold. However, last connection to YYZ had 1/2 the J cabin filled with Rouge FAs.

YEG_SE4Life

Thete is no need to be surprised. You can click any flight and see how many J seats are booked and how many are checked in. From thise who have checked in, you can see how many are upgrades.

ridefar

How can you differentiate between a paid J (or C/Z) customer checked in and a Lat/Flex eUp customer who has had their upgrade clear into J and is checked in?

ffsim

This is a good question.

We didn't go through exactly this on international flights. Think about it:

International
Scenario 1: X credits required to upgrade from economy to a J lie-flat seat since the introduction of the eUpgrade system.
Scenario 2: Y credits required to upgrade from economy to PY seat since the introduction of PY in wide bodies.
X>Y in terms of total eUpgrade credits required.

Domestic
Scenario 3: X credits required to upgrade from economy to a "classic" domestic J seat since the introduction of the eUpgrade system.
Scenario 4: X credits required to upgrade from economy to a J lie-flat seat since the introduction of the eUpgrade system.
Scenario 5: Y credits required to upgrade from economy to a PY seat as of summer 2017.

Internationally, scenarios 1 and 2 are clearly distinct. However, it's a different story domestically. Scenarios 3 and 4, while offering a very different hard seat, both require the same number of credits. Now we're throwing scenario 5 into the mix which offers the same seat as scenario 3 -- this is why top tier flyers like getting this "for free."

The "fairest" way to handle this would be for domestic J and PY to require the same eUpgrade credits while lie-flat requires something else. Ideally, lie-flat would not "cost" more than it does today, but based on the $300 fare premium for booking J on a wide body versus narrow body, I don't think that's really a realistic expectation. Unfortunately.

Wpgjetse

UA's A319's only have 2 rows. That could be a start. Why is Dom J sold? First, 2K is not very much money to some people. Corp Travel over 4 hour rule, last min booking when J is only a few $ more than Y. Very common on the YVR-YWG route. People value comfort/money in many different ways.

canadiancow

The upgrade list.

Plumber

You forgot connections. All of my Domestic paid J flights (and there are many) are part of an international J ticket- ie YOW-YVR, YOW-YYZ, YOW-YUL, YOW-YYC etc and the reverse. When flying YOW-YVR or YOW-YYZ-YVR there are always people in the J cabin that I later see at the International MLL heading somewhere else internationally.

Wpgjetse

I was responding to Transpacificflyers post #62

ridefar

Huh? At best this shows how many upgrades who have cleared after T - 24h or whenever the "list" starts from. Once the flight goes to airport control I would assume. It in no way displays people who were upgraded but never on the list (who upgraded a Y fare at purchase as one example). Therefore you can't find out how many in J are upgrades. I know I am waitlisted for an upgrade <5% of the time. The other 95% I clear at time of booking.

canadiancow

That is incorrect.

It shows you anyone who was upgraded, even if it was done 6 months ago on a Latitude fare.

stevendorechester

I would defiantly buy it on long- haul domestic. The only time I've ever flown PE was with China Airlines ( who upgrade you to J on intra-Asia flights much to my delight ). I found the experience to be as good as North American domestic J/F. Let's hope it's that good with Air Canada.

YEG_SE4Life

If you have checked in with a cleared upgrade, the Android app shows you on the upgrade list with a green checkmark. This happens even if you booked a month ago and received an immediate upgrade. I have personally seen this with 2 of my flights.

ridefar

It that is true I am shocked they are releasing the data for commercial reasons. Seems like it would be trivially easy for a competitor to figure out how much J they are actually selling. It wouldnt be trivial but it wouldnt be hard to further correlate the list with available fares and bucket availability to get a very accurate picture of how many seats are being sold at what fare. Seems to me WestJet doesn't need to scrape websites to get the data that AC sued them over taking. If I am WS, wouldn't I want to know if AC is selling 8% or 80% of their J seats on YVR/YYC-YYZ for example when deciding on competitive strategy and investment?

YYT82

Perhaps AC didn't intend to publish this kind of information, but their IT implementation is so poor that this kind of info is given away. That being said, if you scrape the EYW contest leaderboards, you figure out each of the top players' routings and/or costs to a degree.