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Mea culpa: I just paid full F fare for JFK-SFO on Alaska

Mea culpa: I just paid full F fare for JFK-SFO on Alaska

Old Mar 13, 2019, 2:21 pm
  #16  
 
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Originally Posted by VegasGambler
VX only served SFO and LAX (everything else was a spoke -- other than a couple of seasonal routes, all flights had at least one endpoint in SFO or LAX)
Uhhhh, DAL?
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 2:40 pm
  #17  
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So why did you book AS and not flat bed of AA UA B6 etc?
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 2:44 pm
  #18  
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Originally Posted by RichardInSF
I assumed if the fare was about the same as the flat-bed seat J fare on UA, AA, Delta, and Jet Blue, that the worst I would get was the somewhat limited recline seats found on the old Virgin America.

Wrong! This was the worst F/J transcon that I've been on ever since flat bed seats came on the route at least 10 years ago. I had seat 1C so didn't even have decent legroom. Lots of things that made this flight terrible:

1. Seats are standard domestic first class with recline no better than in economy.

2. No pillows are provided.

3. In-flight entertainment was done by handing out a tiny monitor with throwaway earbuds as a headset.

4. There was no pre-departure drink service.

5. The first class restroom was the same size as those found on regional jets.

I'm aware that all of you knew this and that I should have too. But I didn't. It was a horrid six hours compounded by feeling cheated.

I complained on the Alaska facebook page and within minutes got this passive-agressive response: " I am sorry you were not satisfied with the first class seats. I am sorry about the service I will share your feedback with the inflight supervisor for the poor service. -Andre" Why share with the in-flight staff? It was management that cheated me.

Thanks for reading this rant. Next time, I'll check before booking!
A critical error.

Originally Posted by jsguyrus
Wow is everyone a bit grumpy today? This has been discussed ad nauseam here before. AS is not going to compete with a lie flat, period. What it will compete with is AA/DL/UA domestic first product, even though it doesn't have a pillow or a PDB.

And please....VX is gone, it wasn't sustainable, so lets not use it as the model.
The problem is that AA/DL/UA do not fly their domestic F product on this route. If there had been a reason to do so, they would have offered it. I don't know of any reason why a paying customer would choose AS on a premium transcontinental route. The only reason to fly this on AS is if you're going to pay for Y and be upgraded for free.
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 2:51 pm
  #19  
 
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Originally Posted by jsguyrus
Wow is everyone a bit grumpy today? This has been discussed ad nauseam here before. AS is not going to compete with a lie flat, period. What it will compete with is AA/DL/UA domestic first product, even though it doesn't have a pillow or a PDB.

And please....VX is gone, it wasn't sustainable, so lets not use it as the model.
I prefer the AS seats in F to UA F seats (non lie flat ones) hands down. UA has lie-flats on there PS runs and I agree the AS product can't compete there but then again you have to put up with UA FAs and service. Was going to move most by business over to AS this year with the new routes that opened up post merger being a game changer for me but UA threw GS status at me so I will hang at least one more year with UA. FWIW, UA's GS status has been very UNimpressive so far but can't status match as I already did that several years back with AS as a UA 1K and was pretty much told the status match is a one and done thing.
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 3:00 pm
  #20  
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Originally Posted by jsguyrus
Wow is everyone a bit grumpy today? This has been discussed ad nauseam here before. AS is not going to compete with a lie flat, period. What it will compete with is AA/DL/UA domestic first product, even though it doesn't have a pillow or a PDB.

And please....VX is gone, it wasn't sustainable, so lets not use it as the model.
Just because they got bought does not mean that they were not sustainable. Had they not been bought they probably would have survived.

They had some things that they needed to fix. For one thing, they did not use differential pricing so F did not rise in price with Y. Having F cheaper than Y was not too uncommon, and having it be only a very small premium was quite common. Also their upgrades were just too cheap. They needed to raise the price. It was often too easy to get the first class product without paying what it was worth, as a premium over economy.

F was often full or mostly full; they were probably not extracting enough revenue from it. Cost cutting / product destruction is not the only way to increase profits.

Also, "domestic" includes transcon and hawaii, so, no, they are not competing with AA/UA/DL in terms of domestic F product. They aren't competing on the "economy plus" side either; my transcon on AA in E+ was much better quality product than AS premium ("snack" on AA = BOB meal on AS and the seat was more comfortable). And on UA my domestic F flights have featured a blanket and a full-bar PDB.

If AS is competing, they are losing, at least in terms of quality of product and service (not to mention network). They win in terms of FFP and consistent friendliness of staff (not to be confused with service). FFP has significant, real value of course. Friendliness of staff is important too, but I'll take a surly "yes" over a friendly "no" when I request a scotch before takeoff (and actually most FAs with other airlines are just as friendly; there are unfortunately some exceptions)
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 3:21 pm
  #21  
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Originally Posted by VegasGambler
Being a regional carrier has nothing to do with quality.
On the contrary, I would argue it has everything to do with why AS decided to junk the pmVX F product (because frankly your complaints are more about the pm VX F product being axed, not some vague "quality" problem). Not enough people are willing to pay for a VX-style product for 60-180 minute flights compared to having more Y seats/a denser F product (in effect: more Y seats that are upgradeable to F), and that is the meat and potatoes of the AS route network, even after the merger (NYC is more important for pmVX ex-CA than it is for pmAS, but it's still not ZOMG MOST IMPORTANT MARKET EVER in the merged network).

WN and B6 having great success without ANY F product (before Mint), as well as AS doing just fine with their F product very clearly illustrate that premium F isn't some magical profit inducing unicorn and nobody gives a damn about Y or running a good operation. AA/UA/DL aren't run by idiots who don't pay attention to their markets, and if VX F fleetwide/routewide was some kind of amazeballs "we attract a revenue premium" product for any stage length you'd have RJs with lie-flats.

You can be as grumpy as you want to be about losing pmVX F. I flew it too, well before the merger (though I never paid full price for a ticket because it was on regional routes for $50/$100 gate upgrades, which should be your clue that maybe it wasn't running real revenue premiums ). But AS has the financials and decided they weren't going to keep flying it everywhere (note that B6 doesn't fly Mint everywhere, and NOBODY in the USA flies a premium transcon product on all their planes, so they are hardly alone in this assessment), and that a dedicated premium transcon subfleet didn't make sense. It is quite possible they are as wrong about this as Smisek was wrong about his vision for UA post-CO "acquisition". But here we are.
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Last edited by eponymous_coward; Mar 13, 2019 at 3:27 pm
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 3:42 pm
  #22  
 
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I had a chance last year to fly UA F from PDX-ORD-SJU and back via DFW. I found those domestic F to be pretty similar to AS, with the exception of the A321 I was on from PDX-ORD. That seat sort of rotated as it reclined and I fell right asleep. But online reviews suggest I am not in the majority in my opinion. The food was ok, not bad and not remarkable. The service was just fine. I did like the baggage tracking in the app, and they did hold a connection for me and several other passengers on the connection in ORD.

At the end of the day its pretty subjective, and for my colleagues its really all about networks. I am in a spot where AS serves everywhere I go. But if I were in another market, who knows....
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 3:55 pm
  #23  
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Originally Posted by eponymous_coward
On the contrary, I would argue it has everything to do with why AS decided to junk the pmVX F product (because frankly your complaints are more about the pm VX F product being axed, not some vague "quality" problem).
Not true. If they had a quality product I would not complain that it's different. The problem is not that it's different, is that it's bad.


Not enough people are willing to pay for a VX-style product for 60-180 minute flights
You make it sound like VX F was flying empty. That's not the case at all. It was generally completely full, or going with 1-2 empty seats, despite no comp upgrades.

compared to having more Y seats/a denser F product (in effect: more Y seats that are upgradeable to F), and that is the meat and potatoes of the AS route network,
And that is really the problem. If everyone who is in F paid for Y, then the product quickly starts to resemble Y. AS certainly isn't going to spend money on a cabin that doesn't bring in extra money. And the people getting the "upgrades" don't complain much, because, well, they were "free". And then someone (like the OP) makes the mistake of actually paying for the product and is appalled at the product that they get relative to the price that they paid.

The problem is that it's a mislabeled product. If they want to be all-economy, like Southwest, that's preferable to offering a fake first class service, and charging the same as the other carriers charge for a real one.
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Last edited by VegasGambler; Mar 13, 2019 at 4:07 pm
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 3:56 pm
  #24  
 
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you paid $1600 one-way for Alaska F?
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 4:07 pm
  #25  
 
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As others have noted, the assumption old VX planes were worse is wrong. They are better. Bigger.

And now, with the retrofit of the Airbus, I realized how they can cram in 3 rows whereas they had 2 prior. Cause you have no legspace in the front anymore.
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 4:19 pm
  #26  
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Originally Posted by Colin
you paid $1600 one-way for Alaska F?
Isn't full fare $2000?

And, see, this is the problem. It's not that they don't have real F. It's that they charge the same for fake F as the competition does for real F. If the tickets were $400 this wouldn't be an issue.

The sad part is that, if they sold the tickets for $400, the product would probably get better, because people would buy them, and the cabin would be full of people who paid $400 instead of full of elites who got comp upgrades on $127 fares or applied GGUs to $250 fares. Maybe then they could use some of that extra revenue to buy pillows and pdbs.
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 4:25 pm
  #27  
 
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Originally Posted by s0ssos
As others have noted, the assumption old VX planes were worse is wrong. They are better. Bigger.

And now, with the retrofit of the Airbus, I realized how they can cram in 3 rows whereas they had 2 prior. Cause you have no legspace in the front anymore.
If you think 41" of pitch is "no legspace", you should try domestic F on every other US carrier.
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 4:28 pm
  #28  
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Originally Posted by VegasGambler
Not true. If they had a quality product I would not complain that it's different. The problem is not that it's different, is that it's bad.
Based on what, not getting PDBs? The pitch on AS is better than AA/UA/DL F on non-transcon routes. I've flown DL F with 36 inch pitch multiple times in the last year- the IFE is nice but if the seat in front of me reclines they might as well be in my lap. It's very similar to what AS F was before they extended pitch from 36" to 41".

Originally Posted by VegasGambler
You make it sound like VX F was flying empty. That's not the case at all. It was generally completely full, or going with 1-2 empty seats, despite no comp upgrades.
I am not saying that at all. I am saying there is a vanishingly small chance that AS executives, having full access to VX financials (certainly more than you or I do), went "durr, we hate making money and we're going to make less money than we could, by not standardizing on VX's F product fleetwide".

I am also saying that when they had an alternate choice (run a transcon subfleet ala the rest of the universe that is B6 Mint-ish, involving a fair amount of capital expense, because pmVX F was getting long in the tooth and would have needed the upgrade, and everyone else gets a product pretty close to pmAS), they chose to standardize on something close to pmAS.

It's amazing, isn't it, that everyone has copied DL's FFP but nobody has clued in that running an 8 person F cabin on SFO-SAN was the most amazing money making move ever, and that everyone would make more money running 60 inch pitch F (with no upgrades, ever) on 45 minute flights?

Last edited by eponymous_coward; Mar 13, 2019 at 4:36 pm
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 4:29 pm
  #29  
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Originally Posted by jinglish
If you think 41" of pitch is "no legspace", you should try domestic F on every other US carrier.
That isnt the comparison here. Its 41 pitch domestic F vs. either 1-1 or 2-2 full flat beds on AA/B6/DL/UA. Domestic F with 41 pitch is great if youre flying from PDX-SAN. Its crap if youre flying JFK-SFO.
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Old Mar 13, 2019, 4:36 pm
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Originally Posted by cmd320
That isnt the comparison here. Its 41 pitch domestic F vs. either 1-1 or 2-2 full flat beds on AA/B6/DL/UA. Domestic F with 41 pitch is great if youre flying from PDX-SAN. Its crap if youre flying JFK-SFO.
Yup. PDX SAN is a few hours, and a few hundred. JFK-SFO is double the hours, but not double the price.
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