Gerbs

My company is slowly moving in this direction - the historical policy of J for intercontinental greater than 6 hours has now been appended with an "encouragement" to use Premium Economy for daytime flights. This is being formalized on a departmental basis and admittedly does provide some cost savings on typical round trips from East Coast to UK if only the eastbound flight is in J.

schertz

I completely agree with the comment about BA long haul ... it seems to me that they have done a better job thinking through and segmenting what 4 service classes should look like. The rest of the private airlines have cannibalized their F by making J too ‘nice’ and now they are pre-emptively reducing J to avoid the same thing with W.

TheDudeAbides

The AA J hard product is definitely competitive and on some aircraft one of the best, but the soft product (FAs who fling the service at the pax in the minimum time possible so that they can spend most of the flight chatting loudly in the galley about how bad AA is) is not competitive by a country mile. YMMV I suppose but this has been my -consistent- experience on many many dozens of J trips on AA with only rare exceptions where service is good. I've moved all of my paid J to foreign carriers for TATL and TPAC - AA just isn't close to even the likes of BA, QF or JL and not even in the same ballpark as SQ or CX.

Antarius

Zero disagreement there - I do find, however the TPAC service to be rather good.. TATL tends to be exactly as your describe.

I guess that hasn't changed much since the merger and in the last few years. Soft product was always meh, the hard product used to be garbage and is now good.

deeruck

I've found the crews on the SYD and AKL routes to be a level above the AA standard, but not as good as the others you listed (or NZ).

Geordie405

I too am surprised that it has taken AA as long as it has to introduce a Premium Economy seat on its planes. However, I think it is good from a pure competitiveness perspective in that it allows AA to compete with carriers such as CX, JL, QF who all have PE cabins or, with BA specifically on the TATL JV, to align their products more closely. After all, product alignment was one of the reasons AA started offering complimentary alcoholic beverages in Y on flights to the UK and also why lie-flat beds were introduced on those routes.

I would also argue that the PE cabin appeals to those who are perhaps affluent enough to afford more than Y but who can't stretch to buying a business class ticket. This is particularly true when it's a day flight. I will often fly J back to the UK overnight but will fly PE back to the US during the day, when I am less interested in sleeping.

For some people, cost is the defining factor and they will always take the cheapest option. They usually see the mode of transport as simply being a means to an end: you get from A to B. For others, myself included, the flight is an integral part of my trip and so the hard and soft product are factored in to the equation. On more modern aircraft, PE is actually a very pleasant environment and when you add in the benefits associated with the soft product it becomes an attractive proposition.

ryan182

For TPAC I'd agree, SQ, CX, JL are far better than AA and in First AA is laughable compared to the asian carriers. For TATL however I'd disagree, BAs J product is terrible, LH isn't much better and AA's seat is so superior to either of those I actually avoid BA and for TATL given the shorter flights (eastbound) I'm usually sleeping most of the flight and the hard product is key as I'm generally going direct to meetings upon landing. Going west I prefer T3 to T5 for lounges, admittedly the new F wing is great in T5 but I find the FLounge typically unbearably warm and crowded. For west bound TATL I'm generally working, napping and I can more often than not score a J->F upgrade which is rare on BA and I've had decent crews. The only exception for TATL would be if one is going to MUC or FRA in F on LH otherwise IMO AA actually has the best TATL product In many ways this is more a reflection on the quality of the EU carriers J products than the superiority of AAs but it is what it is. Perhaps in 2595 when BA rolls out their new seats things will be different but for now I'll stick with AA.

PUCCI GALORE

I think that you are spot-on. I've thought this might happen at some stage and not just at American.

3Cforme

With due respect to Jon and JDiver, I'm not convinced. Even with the 789 J reductions I don't assume there is a single J to Y ratio that should apply across fleet types. AA is plenty big enough to have richer J types serve hubs that demand more J: London, Tokyo, LAX and JFK among them, if not PHL or CLT. AA could more heavily base the high J types in hubs that will pay.

thunderlounge

I don't think we end up with 4 cabins, even as a technical.

For INTL configurations, you're looking at (77W excluded for now as it maintains an F cabin) a 3 cabin configuration of J/PE/Y.

On the DOM side, you're in a similar position with F/MCE/Y.

Whether MCE ends up with an actual physical division I cannot say. If they have the true MCE rows at the front of the main cabin it is possible, although most likely not probable.

Question being, what about the seats with the extra legroom that would fall outside of the defined 3-cabin approach? I would speculate that those simply become a preferred seat and will come at a small fee for the room but have no additional benefit. Thus not a true MCE, but simply a seat with a little more room. That being regardless of DOM or INTL configuration.

I suppose one line of thought would be that once they have a truly defined 3-cabin situation then they could simply move the J/PE labels into the domestic market. However I don't think that would be something seen as that could then lead to an expectation on the consumer side of a similar product. I think if this were to be the case that they would keep the names as is, which also helps differentiate when an INTL configuration is used domestically. (Even though now when they do it they call INTL J as DOM F.)

The main thing to all of this is being that MCE on an INTL configuration could lose its name and simply now be a preferred seat. While AA already has preferred seats for a small fee, the old MCE seats (like an exit row) would be a slightly higher fee. Still less than PE (or MCE domestically), of course.




I wouldn't say this prediction is worthless. Looking back you're spot on. J is what F used to be, and PE is what J used to be when it was introduced.

My suspicion with this, and all 3 US carriers are doing it, is that they don't want their F product to be compared to the likes of EY or EK for example, nor do they want to invest in significantly improving their F product even up to an AF or LH, and certainly not to a level of the ME carriers.

Thus they work to rebrand business into their top cabin, and by keeping it at a business level they at least have a better chance to compete on the hard product. AA's J hard product is now competitive (minor exclusions aside in rare cases) across most of the widebody aircraft, DL has their D1 product rolling along, and UA will (eventually) get their Polaris rolled out.

All business, no first, with the exception of AA's 77W. How long they maintain those 8 seats is anyone's guess, but I suspect they will for a while as I can't see them leaving FL Dining just to the JFK-LAX/SFO route. I suppose the real tell in this will be when DFW/LHR/PHL FL lounges come online. If they do not also have the dining (or it could easily be blended into the rest of the lounge) then it may be the sign that INTL F on AA could be going away.

I don't think that will be the case, but it wouldn't surprise me 5 years from now.


While I'm not sure what role PE plays in all of this as far as numbers go, I would think they would have to end up being competitive to those who also offer PE cabins on the same routes. Of course those competitors will also have an F cabin, so they can't really being to start bumping the price of J towards F, nor PE towards J.


Lots of ins, lots of outs, lots of whathaveyous going on. I guess we'll see what happens and how the US3 try to keep up while bowing out of the INTL F game.

Antarius

Agreed. The 77W will retain a premium heavy configuration as it is deployed to high yield routes. It is not uncommon to have 50 EXPs in Y on a Th flight from DFW-LHR and zero cleared UGs

Austin787

I could see AA having four different categories for J allocations:
Low J (20 seats): A332, 788 (if the rumor about reducing J is true)
Moderate J (28 or 30 seats): 763, 789, A333
High J (37 seats): 772
Super high J (52 J seats and 8 F seats): 77W

The key in these configurations is number of paid J, which has no relation to J to Y ratios.

lds89

They aren't putting dining in at PHL (just like they didn't at ORD) because there are no first class flights out of those airports. DFW and LHR are in the "Coming Soon" category. I think AA will maintain international F for a small amount of markets where it makes sense (NYC-LHR; MIA-GRU; DFW-LHR; DFW-HKG; DFW-GRU; LAX-LHR; LAX-HKG)
https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/...rst-dining.jsp

JDiver

I’m sure AA has used RM to study these issues and that you’re correct, some aircraft will have higher J ratios to other seats and these will be deployed on higher density premium routes - taking other variables into consideration.

But what 789 J reductions? The discussion here is about reducing four, or IMO more likely, eight, seats on the 788. And