SFOPeter

See the quote below by United President Scott Kirby in Bloomberg from last year about considering United Premium Plus for United domestic routes. Now UA has deployed the 787-10 domestically as regular service, not just temporarily. This is an interesting development being covered in quite a few mainstream publications including CNBC, Forbes, and USA Today. I'm curious to see what UA does next here with catering and pricing.

As you note, we have had an ongoing discussion on this forum about the competitiveness and pricing of AS F on premium transcon routes, and the new upcoming AS F Recaro seats. Now a very similar seat is available from a competitor 2x per day on a premium transcon route that AS flies 4x per day. It's an interesting development to have an apples to apples seat, and yes, should/could/may affect pricing. There are many similar discussions all over FT when new competition and seat routes are introduced on routes.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...mestic-markets

United Airlines Is Studying ‘Premium Economy’ for Domestic Markets

United Continental Holdings Inc. is considering whether to add an upgraded economy section to U.S. flights -- a feature typically reserved for overseas markets.

The Chicago-based carrier for months has been readying a new “Premium Plus” section with bigger seats and improved dining options. While the company previously said it would add the class to international routes, it’s now considering it for domestic ones, too, President Scott Kirby said at a JPMorgan Chase & Co. investor conference Tuesday.

“We look forward to announcing that, if we can get to a great product at some point,” Kirby said at the event. A United spokeswoman declined to provide any details about the premium features in the domestic version.

caburrito

I think op is mistaken on the 787-10 being on a regular transcon schedule. Where has United explicitly say that the 787-10 will be running the transcon route on a regular basis?

TheDudeAbides

When I fly paid J to New York, I don't even look at AS; it's B6 or AA all the way. AS is fine if you want to burn a GGU that clears at booking or if you want want to play the upgrade game, but when paying for F... no thank you. If you're paying for F on AS when you fly transcon from SFO or LAX, you should have your head examined.

SFOPeter

Here's a quote from Ankit Gupta, UA’s vice president of Domestic Network Planning and Scheduling. https://www.eturbonews.com/234368/un...787-10-service

"We have created the best schedule for our business and leisure customers by offering more choice and more convenience when planning travel between coasts. Combined with the addition of our newest aircraft, the Boeing 787-10, the schedule enhancements build on United’s industry-leading on-board experience."

Guys I know this is FT and sometimes things can get silly, but can we perhaps move beyond "this isn't happening"? I have now posted:

- The quote from the UA President last year saying that they are going to evaluate premium economy on domestic routes.
- The quote from the UA VP of Domestic Network Planning and Scheduling about the 787-10 going on the transcon schedule.
- The published UA schedule showing the 787-10 on SFO/LAX-EWR.
- Pictures of the UA premium economy seat ("Deep Recliner" in Google Flights terminology) which looks very similar to the upcoming AS F Recaro seat.

jrl767

and in the same vein, here are two threads from the UA board:

• https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...9-lax-ewr.html
• Everything you want to know about where to sit on the 787-10

eponymous_coward

So, essentially, UA would be joining AA in offering three-class on NYC-CA if they went ahead with this (your link says "considering", but sure, let's play this game), except instead of lie-flat F/lie-flat J/Y (with extra leg room Y as an elite bennie), it would be lie-flat J/recliner Y+/Y (with extra leg room Y as an elite bennie).

Note that UA wouldn't be consistently offering it fleetwide on every frequency until they dumped a bunch of 752s (and I don't know if they would replace them 1-1 with 787-10s/772s, that's a LOT of seats to flood the market with).

But I am not sure that "Because UA might do PY on some routes AS flies, AS must cut F prices" necessarily applies any more than "because B6 has Mint, AS must have lie flats".

AS is always going to be behind the eightball compared to DL/AA/UA/B6 on NYC-CA. That's just the way it is if you don't have the NYC side, just the CA side (which is split in two, and DL/AA/UA have a hub on both sides, and B6 has the better hub on the single side). If I was betting I would guess they might adjust price some in F and just keep grinding on SFO/LAX/SJC/SAN for incremental market share.

caburrito

I just don't see how United is going to run a very expensive, 300+ seat, widebody 787-10 with 40+ lie flats and PE seats on a regular basis between and LAX and not New York (but New Jersey)....just to see if people would be interested in Premium Economy. It's more likely that the 787-10 will be on transcontinental use for a little bit before being reallocated for it's intended role: thin, long, international routes. Nothing OP has posted explicitly states that the 787-10 is going to be like AA's 321T, actually regularly scheduled.

SFOPeter

It's more like AA SFO-MIA where last year AA sold a mix of lieflat and domestic F on different aircraft at different times. Every type of seat was not available on every flight. For this route I would compare the price of the lieflat seat versus the domestic F. If the lieflat was reasonable and the 1pm timing worked for me, I would book the lieflat on the 767. If the lieflat was really expensive, I would book the domestic F seat on the morning flight. I think people are increasingly looking at the type of seat they are getting, especially with B6 rolling out lieflat on a variety of routes.

n7371f

Love the humor of the OP. Haha. Funny stuff...

eponymous_coward

Well, unless and until AS decides to subfleet a premium transcon plane with lie-flat J, you get what you get on AS. AS's competition on SFO/LAX-NYC has widebodies (UA, DL, AA), lie-flats (UA, DL, AA, B6), three class (AA, maybe UA, perhaps even DL might join the party). AS has shown zero inclination to add any of this, just like how WN isn't interested in adding F or bag fees or flying to JFK.

UA is going to be offering 65 premium seats on every 787-10 and 74 on 772s once they've done their fleet conversion, assuming they do follow through with selling premium Y as a pseudo-business class on transcon. UA is going to be flying as many premium seats on ONE plane as AS flies on four 737s (and if they decide to fly 787s and 772s as 752 replacements, that's going to bloat the market with a ton of seats, UA 752s range from 16 to 28). I don't see AS doing more than 4x on SFO/LAX-EWR (fun fact: AS and UA share the same number of EWR-SEA flights... and that's for AS's best hub. So it's not like they pound UA into the dust anywhere on EWR frequencies, which is a "no **** Sherlock" you'd think).

I mean... I GUESS there could be untapped demand for a ton of lie-flats/premium seats that UA could tap. But B6 is throwing seats in the market and cutting fares. If anything I would expect AS to trim NYC-CA down to a bare minimum and just try and get by with bottom-feeding, if CA-NYC gets flooded with a bazillion seats and UA/AA/DL/B6 decide to play a game of "we'll sacrifice profits, flood the market with premium seats and drop prices, and see who blinks first, we have billions and we're not afraid to set money on fire".

caburrito

StevieTopSiders

chrisl137

The "Transcon J" only applies to certain routes, mostly NYC(JFK/EWR) to LAX and SFO, SFO-BOS, and some LAX-BOS (B6, AA), and on DL and B6 for a few more routes than that. UA sometimes flies the lie-flats LAX-BOS, but not all flights, and maybe not year round, and without the upgraded service that goes with their premium service routes. Most other transcon routes have the wide reclining seats that are comparable to international PE.

AS has a competitive product for the vanilla wide-recliner F seats, but nothing to match the lie flats. For travelers whose travel policies allow paid premium cabins, AS isn't competitive on the premium routes. But for travel policies that allow Y-cabin only, AS is competitive on many routes (including the premium routes) because you have a realistic chance of getting an upgrade to the premium cabin unless you're flying out of SEA. For example, as a UA Silver/AS MVP flying LAX-EWR, I'm lucky if I can get an E+ seat on a completely full plane on UA, but have probably better than 50% chance of an upgrade on AS, and virtually guaranteed premium class or exit row.

PotomacApproach

Just booked the 787-10 EWR-SFO in paid F for March, hope UA doesn't swap me in a 757. Either way, Polaris was the same price as AS EWR-SFO.

Flew JFK-SFO on Mint this week and it's not just the hard product. The service was 10x better than my last JFK-SFO run in AS F. It doesn't seem like AS is even trying with their transcon F product.

sfozrhfco