Or at least on the ANC-Hawaii flights as seen last year... diversions to SEA & AKN

Let's not forget the event that precipitated this topic was the OP, an MVPG, booking a transcon 2 weeks in advance and finding only standard middle seats available. If those routes are so elite heavy that the front Y cabin fills up that fast, who's to say that you'd even be able to get E+ when you wanted it?

If UA could book their flights solid with elites the was AS does on SEA-DCA, the OP would still be in that middle seat. If UA has all those available F and E+ seats available at the last minute, that may be a good thing for you as a elite customer, but for UA it may be a sign of excess capacity. For now, I bet AS is happy to run with high load factors on these highly profitable routes rather than mess with a successful formula.

This is an excellent point. However, I'm not proposing that AS copy E+, simply providing more legroom and giving away seats to elites while charging non-elites for them. I'm proposing that AS create more of a premium economy product, something midway between Y and F, and that they charge everyone for it (with elites either given a discount or given a certain number of freebies per year). I would tune the pricing of this product (North of Coach) such that it typically didn't sell out weeks in advance, but rather that seats were usually available fairly close to the date of the flight.

I just thought of a potential problem with this idea that no one else has mentioned. Let's say I'm an MVPG (which I am). I've reserved a seat on a flight which doesn't have enough open seats in F to allow me to upgrade. I want to make sure I'm comfortable, so I reserve a seat in North of Coach. But I might like to really be in F, so I put my name on the waiting list. If I'm out of my yearly North of Coach freebies, or if AS doesn't give out freebies but rather discounts the section for MVPGs, AS at this point is due to collect an additional $50-100 from me. But if my upgrade clears, then I go into F at no charge and AS misses out on that additional revenue. Hmmm...

I think the way around that would be for NoC to book into a higher fare bucket (like MCS), rather than an add-on a fee. MVPG's who book the NoC fare would have priority for the F upgrade.

The problem I have with this is that you'd be asking elites to pay extra to sit in the front Y cabin, a privilege they currently enjoy for free.

If the problem is with seat availability, they either need to charge more, or add additional seats.

Yeah, this was what I was going to point out- F is free for an elite on a space-available basis, but Y+ isn't? That's kind of problematic.

Rar!

Sorry.

And the more I think about it, the more I think this is a WORSE experience for customers than a straight implementation of E+ on AS would be. You're taking away seats from MVP/MVPG customers they used to get for free, and that's NEVER popular (witness grumbling about baggage fees). Sure, you can sit in the back of the bus if you don't want to pay... but then you're going to get things like MVPGs who fly a lot on AS who pick a seat assignment without paying for "North of Coach" getting a worse seat than a smart FTer who doesn't fly AS very often, but knows from how E+ works on UA that if she doesn't pick a seat, she has a good chance of being put in a North of Coach seat at the last minute for her seat assignment. That's just kind of South of Expected- you're rewarding the person who knows how to game the system, not the loyal customer.

Also:

...which means you have a non-zero risk of NOT selling the ticket, and having lovely empty seats that have great room in coach that would have sold, had you not decided to price them so high.

Also, you're going to hurt F sales by offering an intermediate Y+ product with additional leg room + drinks + digEplayer + food. Basically, you've just replicated F on a 738 without as wide a seat. 738 F for AS is 36-37" pitch, per seatguru- in fact, some Y seats (Row 15) have better pitch than some F seats on that plane.

The reason why VX can offer Main Cabin Select and First is because VX F is much closer to AA Flagship Service F and UA p.s. (both of which are 3-class F) than a standard domestic F like AS has- the pitch is a lot deeper and the VX F seat is MUCH nicer than anything AS has. This means you can offer MCS and not cannibalize F, because there's very clear product differentiation (F gets recliners, different food, plus the usual F cabin stuff), plus VX does a lot more BOB than AS does (all AS does is ONE menu item + snack packs). Your "North of Coach" product is going to either cannibalize F customers, or require you to do something like increase F pitch and services to clearly distinguish between Y+ and F, which will add costs (and if you have to rip out F seats to get that extra pitch, potentially decrease revenue).

One thing I must say about this is that yes, it would be a nice option for the customer. As I have stated before AS is trying to balance being a great airline providing great customer service, schedules, product, etc. while being a business at the same time with emphisis on profit share for the share holders. I also agree as others have posted that the AS market is primarily short flights, 2.5 hours or less, so an E+ section doesn't make as much sense as it would on long haul flights.

Stepping aside from the customer service aspect, lets look at it from the technical side. Most opinions on here seem to think it would be "easy" to do something onboard an aircraft like change the seating configuration, but in fact this sort of thing is just the opposite. If you change the configuration, you change the type certification of the aircraft which will require new certfication from the Feds that costs $$$ and takes time. Not to mention the cost associated with retrofitting an entire fleet of 51 800's. I say the entire fleet because if you just retrofit the ETOPS A/C, then this will add a third seat configuration to the 800 fleet at a time when AS seems to be thinking streamline and commonality (ie. a transition to all 737's).

All in all though if AS thinks they are losing market share to another carrier due to the lack of a product, I am sure they will act in a manner to refresh the product to be better than the other guys.

And as another thought, power ports would be nice too but the added weight and complexity of the system would not fit the majority of the AS market.

Just other of my 2 cents.

Yes, but a middle E+ seat beats a middle E- seat by a mile. There is no comparison for me. If the choice for me were between a middle E+ seat on UA and a middle regular seat on AS (for a transcon), I'd take UA in a heartbeat, even though it means much worse service and even perhaps paying much more for the flight. Of course, if I were the OP, I would not be booking AS middle seats at all and instead book another airline even if it meant a convoluted routing. I just don't fit in standard Y and throwing a middle (or even a window) seat into the mix means I won't be flying.

Today's prediction -- this thread will go to eleven pages and then get locked.

We often forget that the bread/butter of this airline is Alaska, with a huge domination of the ANC (and FAI) / SEA market (approx. 3.5 hours), with no real competition. It makes absolutely no economic sense for AS to do anything to reduce profit in this captive audience, and since the "master plan" is apparently as much fleet commonality as possible with 738s, there has to be a compromise in how the aircraft is configured.

If they really want to dump 1 FA per flight, and don't want to mess with the general cabin layouts, adding a quasi-premium Y section, etc., simply remove a few seats and add another row of F. Upgrade odds go up substantially, they can sell another couple of F seats on the transcons, blah blah blah.

I just really didn't think it would come to that. I figured something (F, exit row) would work out. Silly me!

In the end, I decided to pay out of pocket for F fares, which were being offered though upgrades weren't. $250 round-trip. Not something I'll do very often, but I was in a bind in this case: reservations set and potentially stuck in middles. I just won't put myself in that position again. Of course, that means less business for AS, more for UA.

Hey. At least it's intelligent debate. I can't say the same about some other lengthy threads ...

Yeah I thought the same. I don't know why a few people think this thread is such a waste. It obviously is a hot enough topic to get this far.

Now if we started another thread somewhere on how DL is going to buy AS...then you could say it has gone too far.