R-E-A-L-L-Y Long Westbound TCON ... With 5 Empty Seats in F
 

Hi -

So I am on AS #1367 , BOS-LAX. Three things stuck out:

1) The flight went out with 7/12 in F and 90 in Y/Y+ I have NEVER seen a TCON go out with 5 empty seats up front.

2) Takeoff to touchdown is blocked at 6:50. OMG, almost 7 hours? I could get to LHR faster than that.

3) Nice service, but they served ice cream and told us to use the spoon in the lid. Total rookie move on my part -- I shoulda kept the spoon from the main course.

Ugh, that sucks. I flew to the east coast and was please rly surprised that SEA-DCA clocked in at just under 4 hours so figured going the other way must’ve sucked.

With the winds, flight times on West Coast-bound TCONs are especially bad this time of year.

Last March my DCA-SFO clocked in at around 6:50 and the captain advised us that we may have to make a fuel stop (A320) and would let us know if that would be necessary as we got over the Plains. Luckily we didn't need to.

yesterday our jfk-sfo blocked 7.10

i even saw a delta jfk-las at 6.15

no upgradable MVP/Gold/75k's??!
 

[QUOTE=Orwaid;31955995]Hi -

So I am on AS #1367 , BOS-LAX. Three things stuck out:

1) The flight went out with 7/12 in F and 90 in Y/Y+ I have NEVER seen a TCON go out with 5 empty seats up front.

How is it possible that there were ZERO of the 90 who would have been automatically upgraded? No Golds, 75K's on a transcon? Anyone able to voice in how this is a reasonable possibility? I've never seen it, and frankly one of the endearing features of AS - they make sure their F seats are filled. First of course with paying pax, then with upgrades. Every time I'm listed for an upgrade to F, there's a long list of upgrade requests. I bat about .333 on getting upgraded, which is good enough for the majors ;)

Ahh so nice when the first class cabin isnt crowded.

Probably lots of Saver fares. One flight I took recently >50% pax were in boarding group E.

Full of people like me that buy F seats perhaps.

It's not impossible. Going the other way recently they were calling for a military pax in uniform, because they had one F seat left.

Didn't get anybody, so it went out empty. I felt a little silly using a GGU on the flight and paying for a higher fare class, for an upgrade i clearly would have gotten anyway.

That's why you got all those VX emergency fuel stop several years ago

Just to illustrate the magnitude of the winds, AS SFO-BOS today was 4:37 takeoff to touchdown while BOS-SFO was 7:07 takeoff to touchdown! Distance is 2704 mi.

Yeah that happened to me the one time I used GGUs... which is why I stopped using them. The minimum fare requirement to makes them kind of pointless. This is one area where AS is behind the competition. They should be good on any main cabin fare.

Was that the 5:05pm BOS-SFO? Pilot had originally told us flight time would be 7 hours and 13 minutes. A loud groan was heard throughout the aircraft. F did go out full on this flight (with me occupying a seat in row 4).

Yep!

I am on AS460 tonight LAX-JFK. 75K and MVPG on a single PNR N award. At least 2U were open just prior to the 75K window. We were both upgraded at T-120. Fast forward to day of departure, flight still has F for sale at T-22 when I last checked and only 1 on the upgrade list.

There was also an empty F on AS7 JFK-SEA when I flew that January 7th. The winds were strong then too but we were able to fly further north over Canada and didn't cross back south until central British Columbia to get out of their way. Those flying to California aren't so lucky.

Not a transcon, but I thought amusing, when I flew SJC-LAX on January 6th, there were 7 empty F and everybody on the awaiting seats list was seated in Premium. The 739 was empty beyond row 9. The GGU eligible fare was $179 and they were selling F for $199.

James