Never Gonna Happen...
 

Saw this issue brought up at 2 MVP Gold lunches 2 years ago. To quote Double R "Adding a section to our aircraft to compete head to head with United Economy Plus product would make us revenue negative" or words to that effect. It's the reason AS will never upgrade the F class transcon hard product. They simply can't afford to lose the "per seat revenue"...

Never is a very long time ;)

I'm not a big fan of the E+ concept whatsoever. If doing a transcon in a row with a number of 6 or higher is a traumatic experience, there are alternatives to AS. Take DL (discount on their EC section) or get status on UA, or pay for a seat with additional space. Yep, upgrades are nice and I like 'em as much as the next elite, but in the long run, I'd rather see my preferred carrier stay in business and occasionally sit in the back.

Well...
 

With that I agree! AS has such a strange little niche in the marketplace, that they just do not want to compete on the hard product. At one of the lunches the MVPG lunches, Rick talked a lot about this. He said that AS COULD compete on the soft product (& on their transcons they do a nice soft job), but that seat wise, they simply can't afford to pull out seats in order to upgrade their hard product...

Can't afford to? They can afford to. There just won't be much return on the investment. What they could have much more easily afforded to do was buy more comfortable seats with the vast number of deliveries they have recently taken (and will take -the 738s). But since that didn't happen, it won't happen.

I don't expect any further creature comforts out of this airline anytime in the near future.

If there's no return on investment, they can't afford to...

Did you not see my earlier post on the new seats AS is considering for new aircraft deliveries?

If they go that route, the seats will be more comfortable and, I suspect, the accountants at AS will be happy, too. I won't hazard a guess as to which is more important.

I should have clarified my comment to be the F cabin seats. I saw your post ;) I'm operating on limited sleep after hours and hours and hours and hours and then a connection and then more hours and hours on UA last night through mid day today. :eek:

If you are flying in paid F, you should give CO a try... Their F experience [IMO] is better than UA with better meals, DirecTV, better blankets [thicker and not the fleece variety], better hot towels [the thick kind, not the ones you can see through], etc.

The UA seat is slightly better than CO, but both are better than AS for me.

I really hope that the new UA will adopt CO's soft product 100%. Yes that means the loss of pillows, but I never use those pillows and they are nasty IMO since they only really clean the "cover" but not the inside.

I think AS does not need to purchase new F seats to make them more comfortable, they just need to double the recline, add more padding in the upper/lower back area, and find a way to increase pitch by 1-2". Even with less recline in AS F, the F space is still more cramped than CO's.

AS simply has the largest front galley/closet space in the industry, which really eats a lot into the F space.

Been there (just not as recently). ;) Though I didn't mention it earlier, AS also was showing two new options for seats in F, but neither was significantly different, IMHO, than the current F seats, just incremental improvements. Only the coach seats were significantly different and improved.

So those wanting E+ seats, which I dont should consider some ramifications of such a product. If it happened then we are going to have AS elites complaining that preboarding is too many people. You will then be fighting with all the non elites that bought E+ seats for stowage. Then after that wait for them to start offering preboarding to anybody for $10 or $30 at check in :td:

I think this is probably the single best observation I've seen in this entire thread. The legacies tend to see F as a perk for keeping elite travelers happy; if they get some people on generous expense accounts to pay for it, that's gravy. AS really does see F as something to be monetized. As an elite, I may not like it, but if I try to play the impartial observer, I have to admit that it seems to be working for them -- so far.

I can't speak for other elites. Speaking only for myself, as a 1K and MVPG based in SEA, I'll continue to fly AS to Hawai'i, because Mrs Seaflyguy and I both have AS Visas and so can fly there in F twice a year (which we have been doing on average of late) -- plus it's far more convenient than any UACO option. And I'll continue to fly them up and down the West Coast, as long as doing so doesn't impede my ability to retain 1K. But I do a lot of transcons, and at this point I just don't see myself doing too many more on AS. It has been at least a year, maybe two, since I've been upgraded on an AS transcon, and the Gold chits seem to never be usable on them. I can fly UACO to EWR or IAD nonstop with a 90%+ upgrade rate, and on those rare occasions that I don't get upgraded, I know I'll have improved seat pitch in E+. So my guess is that I'll drop down to MVP after 2012, and probably stay there -- 2x SEA-KOA-SEA + a few SEA-SFO-SEA trips will just barely get me to 20K. And my guess is that AS financial model allows them to lose some of the business of people like me and do just fine.

That statement should be qualified to read "domestic F". Legacies doing international flying most certainly don't give away IAD-LHR F and J seats like they give away IAD-SEA. UA/CO doesn't give free upgrades on all of their domestic routes, even: EWR/IAH-HNL and JFK-LAX/SFO are significant exceptions that would require instruments... because they sell a lot of premium seats.

And, in fact, AS does give a lot of F away. My lifetime upgrade percentage on SEA-Greater LA is somewhere north of 90%, and most times when I don't get it is when I throw an upgrade away to switch to a better timed flight on same day change.

They operate the equivalent of international business class on these routes.
I have excellent upgrade success on Calif flights and Las Vegas. I think everyone agrees that the upgrade rates and seat comfort on AS are fine on these routes. Where we are dissatisfied is on the transcons, where there are essentially no upgrades available and where AS's seat comfort in both Y and F is subpar. These flights would be more attractive to elites if there were a Y+ product available, or if the F cabin were bigger.

The problem being that AS's mix of flying isn't oriented towards transcon*. Let's see: 2xEWR, 3xDCA**, 1xMIA, 1or 2xMCO seasonally, 3xBOS, and (I guess) 1xATL (if you push it).

AS flies 12xSEA-LAX alone (not counting BUR, ONT or ANC/PDX-LAX).

So expecting the transcon tail to wag the dog when it comes to AS's mix of service may not be realistic. That 738 that flies SEA-EWR-SEA today might be going SEA-LAS-PDX-LAX tomorrow- and will people pay for E+ and nice cushy F seats with extra pitch for a 2 hour flight? My experiences on VX and AS lead me to believe that on shorter flights, it's a much harder sell.

*yes, Hawaii- except those aren't elite-heavy routes.

** and LAX-DCA is a very easy upgrade, for the record. Regularly see much-beloved U on that one.