David7

With the SFO route updated yesterday to include First Class, all First Class award seats for the entire summer period have already gone.

lesamuel

I think you're probably right, but I'm hoping there's still a chance. It just wouldn't make sense to me for them to service that route less, especially for peak travel season.

SuperEWR

I wonder if they decided that they had too much F capacity into LAX and that was driving down yields. I have less experience with F but in general for other cabins, I've found LAX way cheaper (as much as 50%) than SFO because every carrier feels like they need to serve LAX and there's no dominant US carrier that drives loyalty to any alliance. JL/AA together have 3 daily frequencies with F to LAX with a total of 24 F seats, all to HND (vs ANA currently with one frequency to each of HND and NRT). SQ11 also adds another 4 F seats. In the current winter season, that's 44 daily F seats between LAX and TYO. I can't think of any other market from either TYO or LAX that has that many daily F seats on the route.

Conversely, from SFO, JL has one frequency with F (JL001) and it's not even a daily right now, so there's not even 8 daily F seats from SFO right now. Between the lower competitiveness of SFO vs LAX and the fact that it's their TPAC JV partner UA's hub, I wonder if they just decided that if there's not enough 777s to service all routes, SFO might be the better option for them.

lesamuel

If space opens up, is it possible to change my outbound LAX-HND segment to LAX-SFO-HND to get on the 777 (provided there's space)? I just want to fly in the Room

pesos

I looked back but I don't think you mentioned who you booked with. If United, then yes it should be possible to route that way but you may owe more miles to include the connection (same with ANA). There would be a change fee I think (but it's been a good while since I've done a United award, I mostly do Virgin). If Virgin there will be a $50 fee to change and I don't think you'll be able to include the connection since it's not NH metal - you'd have to get yourself to SFO, collect and recheck your bags, and reclear security.

lesamuel

I booked through ANA.

CPH-Flyer

You can't change route on ANA, only dates.
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theasianguy

Just wait, be patient, F will return to LAX on NH .

I think there may have been a miscalculation about 24 F seats on LAX-TYO between JL/AA. Of those 3 flights, Only JL 15/16 LAX-HND is a 77W with 8F seats. JL 61/62 LAX-NRT is operating on a high density 787-9 with only 28J and no F. AA 169/170 is a 788, with only 20J and no F.

So in fact, there are only 28 total F seats on the LAX-TYO market this winter, and would shrink to a measly 12 if NH pulled all 77Ws from the route. Yes, paid transpacific F demand is far greater from LAX than SFO. I don't think any Asian airline has operated more premium seats to SFO than LAX in the past. The 60+ J cabin on both NH LAX 77W flights appear quite full on close in bookings, so I can't imagine why they would shrink down to 48 x 3. Also, 77W gives a nice boost to belly cargo.

theOtherHolmes

What I really am curious about is why paid transpacific F demand is far greater from LAX than SFO.

Any educated guesses?

aquanine

Non-educated guess: LAX has connections to pretty much every major and major-minor city on every major carrier (AA, UA, DL, AS) b/c nobody is dominant. So if you live anywhere in the west half of the US, you have a nonstop to LAX and can then book the F connection. Whereas SFO is dominated by UA so feed is only Star Alliance and more O/D traffic focus.

Grubman1234

Hi, I have a flight booked from ORD-HND-ORD in F for November 2023. It currently shows that it's on the 777 but it doesn't say "The Suite". Is it safe to assist that it's going to be the previous first class product. I was looking forward to the new first class since it'll be my first time ever flying first class. Or is it to early to tell?

Thanks

SuperEWR

I think it's actually the reverse, SFO is more of a connecting hub for Star Alliance but also any airline that partners with Alaska (both OW but also some one-offs like KE and SQ), while LAX is primarily O&D. Also, my guess would be that F is sold primarily to O&D customers, the number of LAX or SFO-based F customers likely substantially outweighs the number of F customers connecting from smaller airports. The difference is that LA and SoCal as a whole (given the minimal international service to other airports, there's just CI to ONT and a couple flights to SAN, all of SoCal is effectively LAX's catchment area for long-haul) has a lot more wealthy people than the Bay Area, more demand from wealthy travelers and more people of various Asian ethnicities. Though the Bay Area does well in all three of those, it's not quite SoCal. LAX is only geographically well placed for connections from Australia / New Zealand, there's backtracking involved for European and Asian connections. If you look at how the US carriers are serving the west coast, LAX is primarily O&D to top business destinations that local customers want and partner hubs. UA of course has SFO for TPAC but DL and AA are both trying to build up SEA as a TPAC hub (DL I think more successfully than AA), which wouldn't be necessary if LAX was serving that role well. SEA works well because the northwestern location is the best geography in CONUS for TPAC, SEA has good O&D corporate demand (Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing), a decently high income population, and also a lot of people of Asian descent. AC uses YVR in the same way.

I don't know enough about how ANA's management team approaches routes, but if you look at how savvy US carriers approach LAX vs other West Coast connecting hubs (and I would consider that to be UA and DL), there's actually a lot less service from them in LAX than SFO for UA and SEA for DL. On their own metal, UA serves 8 destinations in Europe (LHR, CDG, AMS, FRA, MUC, ZRH, TLV and now FCO), 12 destinations in Asia (HND, NRT, KIX, ICN, TPE, PEK, PVG, CTU, HKG, SIN, BLR) and 5 in the South Pacific (SYD, MEL, BNE, AKL, PPT), many with 777s. Compare that against their LAX long-haul network (LHR, HND, NRT, PVG, SYD, MEL), which is tiny in comparison. Far fewer destinations, frequencies and only on smaller 787s. Ignoring the fact that some of the routes (particularly the China and India ones) aren't fully back yet, Their long-haul strategy with LAX is just to serve key destinations that matter to O&D customers for corporate contracts (ideally also partner hubs), let other Star Alliance carriers pick up the slack on connecting traffic since those carriers more or less have to serve LAX from their own hubs, and cede nonstop markets that are too competitive. If you look at how UA approaches LAX-LHR vs SFO-LHR, which should both be primarily O&D given LHR is not a partner hub for UA and SFO is the second worst place to connect to LHR in UA's network after LAX, UA has way more seats on SFO-LHR (summer schedule has 2 777-200s and a 787-9 for 148 Polaris seats) than LAX-LHR (2 787-9s for 96 Polaris seats) even though LAX-LHR is a bigger market, and I think it's because LAX-LHR is too competitive with all 3 US carriers and both BA/VS, while SFO is just UA from the US side. Anecdotally, the long-haul fares I've seen now living near SFO are roughly 1.5-2x what I use to pay from LAX. If NH have a limited number of F seats to sell since they're only on their 777s, it probably makes more sense to try to win in still good but less competitive markets like SFO vs LAX. Would seem to make more sense to me to have one 777 on each of LAX and SFO from NH's side, as JL does, but maybe they see roughly equal amounts of demand from the Bay Area and SoCal for premium seats overall, so 2 777s to SFO vs 3 787s to LAX works (not unrealistic given that pre-COVID, they flew to SJC in addition to SFO).

Btw, DL does the same thing for LAX (LHR and CDG in Europe, HND in Asia, and SYD, AKL and PPT in the South Pacific) vs SEA (LHR, CDG and AMS for Europe, HND, ICN, PEK, PVG and historically KIX for Asia), though less true on the South Pacific side.

SuperEWR

Huh that's really strange, I was looking at random dates in June on Google flights and the AA flights show up when searching for F, but then if I dig into what they're flying, they're 787s as you noted so they don't actually have an F cabin...that's my miscalc for sure, so that for sure changes the analysis. All I can say is that I hope NH keeps F on the SFO routes and more importantly, keeps dumping award seats onto the market like they have been

joejones

Silicon Valley generally doesn't pay for F. If you're a billionaire mogul you probably fly private; if you're a mid-level executive at a FAANG type company you probably fly business. The entertainment industry, on the other hand, often pays for F as part of the contract. Also, lots of Asian companies have their US headquarters in Southern California, and let senior executives fly F. And lots of high net worth Asians choose to live around LA, moreso than SF.

theOtherHolmes

That makes sense. Thank you!