eponymous_coward

VegasGambler

I strongly disagree with that. You get what you pay for. Free upgrades to F are what has killed the domestic flying experience. There is no incentive to keep the quality high if it's not bringing in any revenue.

I would MUCH rather pay for a real F experience than get a free upgrade to a premium economy experience that has been mislabelled "first class". That's why I loved VX.

jsguyrus

And that may be your feeling and what works for you. However, the proof is that it doesn't work for most people, otherwise VX would never have sold themselves and all the majors would be installing VX style first. There is simply a limited market for an upscale domestic first product.

eponymous_coward

This of course assumes that there are enough people to purchase F seats to make up for the lack of revenue from allowing those seats to be unfilled (and the revenue available from having more seats on the plane).

There are also more ways to bring in revenue into your F cabin than just filing an F fare. Delta's been doing stuff like that. Alaska has dabbled in it as well.

Southwest has MUCH better profitability than Virgin America had. They offer zero F seats. Their niche is the 400-1500 mile flight (1-3ish hours). A lot of Alaska's route portfolio falls into that market. A good chunk of VX's market's there too.

And yet, in an industry where EVERYONE loves to copy everyone if they think they can get a buck, nobody is out there configuring their entire shorthaul fleet with 55 inch pitch, 8 F cabins with plush recliners and abolishing the F upgrade. Alaska has complete access to VX's financials. If anyone knew the revenue potential of VX's F cabin as applied to the combined network, it was them. So either they're idiots (and just coincidentally ran a very consistently profitable airline while being idiots, while other airlines ran into bankruptcy ditches), or they looked at it and went "there's no there there, it's doesn't make sense for us to adopt their model".

In the end Alaska decided that the B6 Mint-induced premium pricing wars and subfleets weren't for them, so no transcon configured subfleet, it's all one standard F product. I guess we will find out if they're right on that.

Case in point: B6 Mint is transcon or some utilization flights, not fleet-wide. There's going to be lots of all-Y (plus EML) flying for years to come.

Also, private jets compete at that end of things as well (and quite well I would guess).

VegasGambler

Well OF COURSE it's more profitable to cut costs (and quality) and charge the same price. This is not exactly breaking news. My point here is not that they don't make more money from this, it's that the product is not "first class" in any sense. Basically, we (the customers) are getting ripped off. At this point, they can just label ANYTHING "first class" and people think that they are getting a deal when they get "upgraded" to it.

When you say "it's more profitable", that's just another way of saying "they are keeping more of your money and spending less of it on the product"

The sad part is, there's not much that I can do about it. AS's F is about as good as United's, and still 100x better than AA. I've heard that Delta is upping its game a bit, but being based in the bay area, they are not a very useful airline to me. Since AS and UA offer the same (lack of) quality product, all I can really do is pick the cheapest one for any given trip.

eponymous_coward

VegasGambler

Do you really think that the people who are willing to spend $50 to upgrade to F (or maybe an extra $100 - $300 to buy F up-front) form the same market as those willing to spend something in the $10k to $20k range to take a private jet every time they fly? There are a couple of orders of magnitude of difference in there.

eponymous_coward

OK, sure. Fine.

Let's go back to something you said: "There is no incentive to keep the quality high if it's not bringing in any revenue." Apparently Alaska executives agree with you. VX F/no upgrades/cash or sit in the back wasn't bringing in real revenue premiums compared to other models once they combined the airline and figured they'd be flying a single F cabin everywhere. They saw the numbers and said "nope, not worth the investment converting our fleet (which is considerably larger with MANY routes that NEVER touch SFO/LAX/NYC where actual large numbers of rich people who pay for a premium product live)".

There'd be a ton of empty F seats on SEA-places, PDX/SAN/SJC-places, collecting $0 (or maybe an occasional $50 upgrade on a coach fare). It's not like B6 is rolling out Mint on LGB-LAS, is it?

VegasGambler

I have no idea what the seat map would look like. I flew VX a lot and there was rarely an empty seat in F (and almost never more than 1). It's not like they were flying empty. F was almost always over half full when the upgrade window for gold opened, so they were selling a significant number of F fares (not all upgrades). I would often buy an F fare because the I didn't think that there'd be a seat available by the time the window opened (I was very conservative in this regard; I'm sure I could have saved a bit of money had I taken a few more risks, but I literally ended up on F every single time I flew) Then again, there were only 8 seats to fill on every flight. I flew mostly SFO-LAS, with occasional trips to/from LAX, OGG, ORD, PDX, SEA, and SJD. Maybe other routes were different.

There are plenty of people with money in a the cities that you are talking about; I'm sure that F would not be empty. Would it be as full as it was in/out of SFO? I'm not sure.

But, yes, again, obviously cutting the quality will lead to more profit for them. This doesn't surprise me. Just remember that this is a zero-sum game: more for them = less for you.

ptownca

My take having been Elevate Gold for 4 years and really enjoyed it is as follows:

Aside from AS not doing proper maintenance on VX F since the buyout, the real issue is the tone deafness of AS leadership. Nothing I have seen reported tells me they understand what made VX loyalist like me stick with VX.

In comparison, the newest AS 737's in coach have a miserable slim line seat, where even in Y, the VX seats were comfortable even on a transcon. After I did one SEA<>BOS trip in Y, my back said never again.

I'm lucky to have escaped SEA for many reasons, but now B6 is my go to and no complaints so far. Mint is awesome too.

eponymous_coward

The logical corollary to your assertion is that VX was subsidizing your F seat by forgoing opportunities to maximize revenue and profit (which is implicit in "cutting quality = more profit"- "not cutting quality = less profit". Airlines are not charitable foundations meant to give us discounted white leather recliners at 35,000 feet.

Assuming that I don't just walk away if I don't like the bargain (which I am comfortable with- like I say, I fly WN with no problems, if the AS program got stupid I'd walk) or don't actually need to pay 3xY prices for a white recliner with 55" pitch for a one hour flight (which I don't).

I've been fine so far (though I'll fly DL and WN for an upcoming trip for reasons... always good to explore options).

I don't have this experience, with MANY trips in AS Y, short, mid and transcon (something like 400k on AS flights when awards are lumped in with actually flying). The seats are fine for me. I haven't really noticed a difference on VX (though I haven't flown them transcon- I think connecting through SFO/LAX to go transcon in Y is stupid, just like connecting to go transcon in SEA for a VX flyer would be, and VX's network out of SEA just didn't work for me). YMMV.


Good that your choices are working out for you. I wouldn't have the money for Mint anyway.

sltlyamusd

I'm sure it depends on the person, but I actually like the AS seat due it being a bit firmer.

n7371f

bkojote

Pi7473000

I had to fly Alaska again for work and the service was really poor compared to VX. The food and drink choices were limited and the customer service staff was not nearly as friendly as VX. The service from OGG to SEA was non existent on a red eye and then from SEA to LAX. I will really miss VX and their comfortable seats and great staff. Alaska did not even offer a premium economy section. I will avoid the new Alaska out of SEA, SFO, and LAX and use Delta or United instead. I never though UA would be a choice again, but they are nicer than the AK product. Hopefully AK will improve by more training for its staff, better food, premium economy, and improved F class seats with footrests and better IFE.