ty97

DL has installed such bins on their retrofit A319/A320. I like them a lot and found them a bit of a revelation ("why didn't someone thing of this sooner!"). But an FA commented that they have issues with them (seemed to be about closing them and perhaps making them stay latched from what I could ascertain) and that the company hadn't consulting the FAs about this new bins. But that was a single comment from a single FA (and said in a simple matter-of-fact way from a very professional and attentive FA)

ty97

Even Jetblue is adding seats to their planes. Their pitch will still be better than the majors (I think around 32?) but they are riding the same added-seat train concept and 34 will be no more.

rjque

(Bolding mine). The problem is that better seats are not guaranteed, nor are they always available. Heck, as a Platinum, I find myself unable to select MCE on a fairly regular basis.

There are all kinds of scenarios where high fare and elite passengers will be stuck in these 29" pitch seats. At 6'4", I'm not sure I'm willing to risk that.

ty97

Yes and no. I have plenty of friends who are infrequent flyers who have been sharing this story with interest (negative interest to be certain!). Will it influence their future purchasing decisions? Doubt it in most cases, which goes to your points. But they are certainly showing interest, at least in the "wow, the airlines suck!" transient way until the next bad airline story comes along.

That said, I do have a friend who claims to have sworn off UA after the recent spate of events, so who knows.

dtc

You must've missed this article from last week:

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/201...-airlines.html
"This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first...again. Shareholders get leftovers," wrote Citi analyst Kevin Crissey in a note to clients. Investors showed their displeasure by sending American Airlines shares down 7.3 percent to $43 in morning trading.


I used to be bothered by this... but then a great professor in B-School gave a talk that went something like this: "Business is simple. Profit = Revenue - Expense. As a business you are at war, not just with competitors, but also with your suppliers (which includes employees) and customers. They want the opposite that you do. You need to win on all three fronts."

Fortunately the competition front isn't something that AA really needs to worry about anymore since the industry has reached the typical steady state of 3-ish major-ish competitors.

If you were running AA or DL or UA, wouldn't you do the same? (And besides, if it flops, you'd still have a multimillion exit package that you negotiated up front.)

I also wouldn't count on the current Federal government. They'd probably let AA+DL+UA merge and rebrand themselves as "Freedom Airlines", and switch to standing room only.

My only regret is all that time, money, suffering I did to earn lifetime gold. How stupid do I feel!

bse118

Sure, there will be cases at the margins where people end up in these seats, but unlikely that that will both be a big enough number of passengers and happen often enough to cause those passengers to book away from AA so as to have any appreciable negative effect on AA's revenue.

Remember FT is a representative sample of AAs customer base.

tvtd

I'm not too crazy about them. The design engineers had to operate on a couple of assumptions, the biggest being that kettles won't hear "Bin can fit more bags" and not think "My bigger bag will now fit". Any FA or any one of us know otherwise. As far as I can tell DL still gate checks as many carry-ons as any other flight with normal bins.

Seems to be a lateral advancement at best.

tphuang

on mint, it's still 33 seats and Y seats on B6's E-jet are really comfortable.

At this rate. B6's Y will soon be better than AA's F

NoleATL

Spirit is 29"... Welcome to the world of low cost carriers.

rjw242

This explains so much about people I know who went to business "school."

jamesinclair

AA sees this as competing with Spirit and Frontier, but I see this as giving those airlines a boost.

Right now, many people (myself included) simply exclude the ultra low cost airlines from our searches because we do not want to deal with the "experience."

But iff AA and UA are providing the exact same experience, then why wouldnt I do a full price comparison?

And I have a feeling Spirit and Frontier and going to continue winning on price.

People here love to say that travelers will always book on cost, but we know its not true because the ultra low cost market is still a really small percentage of the air market. If thats what everybody wanted, wouldnt Spirit be loading up A380s with 28" pitch? No, unless thats the default experience.

bse118

"People here love to say B6 has a great product with comfortable seats and nice amenities, and people will choose to fly them over competition, even if more expensive. But we know it's not true because Jetblue is not serving every major route in the US"

Both of these arguments are fallacies.

AlwaysAisle

Yes, I have been in that narrow lavs before. I did not know about the narrow lavs on other airlines, and as I entered it was that obvious right away I felt inside of the lav being tight. My thought was wider people will not enjoy using this lav.

Even for me, on long trans continental flights I often want to wash may face toward second half of the flight, can feel my face getting bit oily. Inside of that narrow lav will be difficult to wash my face. Least on trans continental wide body there seems to be one wheel chair accessible lav which is roomy, but AA aircraft tend to have that in business class, so if I am stuck in Main Cabin then…

3Cforme

Beyond your remarks to SJC ORD LDR, one can add, so what? I'm not taking up residence in an airplane lav - it's a quick 'Do what one needs to do, wash hands,' and exit. Are 3 lavs for 160 Delta coach passengers on a 739 superior to 2 lavs for 144 in a 738? Yes, obviously. (And I'm not a narrow guy.)

3Cforme

I don't have (the proprietary) data, but business writers and airline management keep saying that people buy on price. We don't know how large your 'many people' really represent as a fraction of coach-cabin travelers. We do we see that, on a revenue passenger miles growth metric, Spirit/Allegiant/Frontier have been growing faster than AA/DL/UA/AS; in Europe over the last decade the difference is even more stark in favor of LCC and ULCC carriers vs. legacies.

Pretentious FTers (a small but noisy subset) can mock Spirit all they want: Look at its ROIC. It is a successful business.

Delta execs started using very clear language from ~2009: we intend to give passengers what they'll pay for. Not what they say they want but then don't buy - what they'll pay for. More planes with premium cabins, lie-flats in long-haul business, wifi, extra-legroom seating across ~90% of the combined mainline and Delta Connection fleet... but one needs to pay for it.

I don't know that 30" coach pitch in the AA-chosen seats is going to provide an adequate baseline of comfort. I do accept that it's AA management's responsibility to keep testing (in focus groups, and in the market) for what product elements passengers will pay.