Asiana removing majority of F class
 

Another cost-cutting measure it seems.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20150826000229

Asiana to remove nearly all its first-class seats
2015-08-26 09:30
Asiana Airlines Inc., South Korea's No. 2 flag carrier, said Wednesday it plans to eliminate almost all its first-class seats from its international flights as part of an effort to cut losses.

The first-class seat system usually leads to high costs, but most airlines have been holding on to the operations despite low occupancies.

Asiana has been struggling under the aftereffects of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak, which had led to travelers canceling their flights amid fears of catching the illness.

The airline's loss during the April-June period widened to 85.4 billion won ($71.63 million) from the previous year's loss of 11.8 billion won, with sales falling to 1.3 trillion won from the previous 1.4 trillion won over the cited period.

"Considering that our company is at an absolutely inferior position in terms of supply of first-class seats, all other flights will change to a two-class system, while the first class will remain on our four Airbus 380 airliners," Kim Soo-cheon, chief executive officer of Asiana, told employees via a video message.

The Asiana chief said the company suffered some 150 billion won in losses from the MERS outbreak during the past three months, as lackluster demand from China and Japan has not been improving.

Although the latest decision was made as an emergency countermeasure to the stumbling business, Asiana has already been pulling back from the three-class system on many of its flights.

Of the company's 74 airliners, only 20 provide first-class seats, and 12 others are run on a mono-class basis. (Yonhap)

Is this really news?

First class in OZ has only been available to LAX or JFK for quite some time, so nothing really groundbreaking here.

A sad day. So will they replace them with more J seats? What about on the 744s - will they just put in more slanty-seats or something nicer?

"Considering that our company is at an absolutely inferior position in terms of supply of first-class seats, all other flights will change to a two-class system, while the first class will remain on our four Airbus 380 airliners," Kim Soo-cheon, chief executive officer of Asiana, told employees via a video message."

In other words, no more F on the 747 Combi and 777.

If they combine this with either retrofitting the QS on all aircraft or even upgrading the J offering, I would say they are likely to come out ahead compared to keeping F.

The sad reality is that F demand on OZ is, for the most part, limited to redemptions and upgrades. No point keeping an F cabin for passengers who do not pay with cash to be there.

This was the first question that came to my mind too. It would seem more reasonable to just leave them in the 744s and phase them out. ICN-FRA for instance has F, but it is my understanding that they'll get the last A380 on order soonish anyway. Not sure if that time-span would be enough to get a decent ROI on retrofitting the 744.

Does anyone know how old the 744s are? How far into their useful life are they?

Yikes.
I'm booked in F on JFK-ICN-HAN return in late February/early March.
Unless I missed it the article doesn't suggest a timeline.
Any ideas??

I have done some quick research and found an average age of about 20 years
http://www.planespotters.net/Airline/Asiana-Airlines

It seems they can have a useful life of up to 30 years historically, but I don't know whether they're efficient enough to make economic sense that long for OZ. In any case, it seems retrofitting them could make sense. Another option would be to run 2-class service and try and fill more F seats that way, though I personally don't consider that a very elegant solution.

Another consideration is whether OZ currently has the capacity to retire aircraft during retrofitting. My guess is no, so they would have to wait until more A380 are delivered and there's more slack.

HelloItsMe, my guess would thus be that this will take some time for OZ to implement, though I don't have any proof.

JFK is served by A380. you'll have F

I'm going to guess that they will leave the F seats as is on the 747s. They will just limit the seats for their elite members (or *G members) on paid Biz fares. Somewhat similar to what they do on the intra-Asia flights that have the 747s right now. On the 777s, they will put in the new QS products in the existing F cabin since the J cabin already has the QS product.

According to other articles,

1. Removing F from 4 777s and 4 747s will end in (early?) 2017 because it takes time to make replacing seats.
2. All-Y 767 will increase from 1 to 5. Then only 2 767s will be C+Y.
3. All-Y 320s will increase from 11 to ?.

Asiana will retire 2 leased 777s in 2016 but it will keep 747 and 767 for a much longer timeframe because Asiana owns them.

Now it's KE's turn to be humble and do something about its excessive number of C seats. According to one of Korean TV show, KE op-up'ed 60 people on one 380 flight to ATL.

60 people?! What show/channel is this?

Also, I mean, was the 380 oversold by that many? Or were they just like "oh, here, you long term Morning Calm Member, enjoy?"

I don't think it's any secret that the 94J config on the KE A380 was a massive pipe dream, seemingly for the sole purpose of being able to claim the lowest density A380 out of all the operators.

If they had no or little J bookings and very high Y demand, it's not difficult to see why they would have accepted the 60 extra pax in Y.

My KE ICN-LAX A380 flight last month was pretty open in C when I checked in, but in the lounge (on the way to the plane) the agent said it was completely full.
I said "wow!" and she said "I know! Economy Class was overbooked by sixty people!" So I guess they had to move 'em all up......


Lots of happy business pax on that flight I suppose.....
As usual, the cabin was hot as hell, yet Korean pax were covered up in blankets...... :D

Koreans like it hot :D