Originally Posted by sbm12

I wasn't suggesting that anyone pay for the F seat on the MD80. I was just pointing out that there are some tangible benefits that it provides. And there are a lot of people who do pay for F seats on NYC-Florida routes, as they are pretty close in price to Y fares - usually only $30-50 more. Folks who are buying the discount seats may not care, but someone who wants an F seat actually generally wants an F seat, not just a good Y seat. Whether they're making a wise decision or not isn't really something that we can decide for the (I'd never pay for an F seat to FL either, FWIW).

But the biggest issue with the lack of F cabin on B6 for alliances is that the other partner(s) need to feel whole in terms of earning and redemption within the group. AF and KE stopped redemptions of their F product by partners because the partners could not offer anything comparable, thereby putting KE/AF at a significant disadvantage. B6 would be doing the same thing to any partner they team up with. I'm not saying that it precludes a partnership, but it makes it more difficult. In the same way a passenger would be disappointed to come off a TATL J flight and end up in CO Y on an ERJ, imagine coming off a spacious B6 flight and then having to sit in Y on Aer Lingus. It is arguably just as bad based on the comments made that the minor extra space isn't really all that big a deal.

Oh, and adding partners would likely require them to copmletely rework the TrueBlue program and the way rewards are issued, unless a TATL/partner reward will cost the same number of points as a B6 reward. Otherwise how do you save the extra points for the TATL/partner reward since the TrueBlue reward is automatically issued.

I'd love to see it happen, as I think it would increase the value of the TrueBlue program and help B6 add more traffic, but I'm not betting on a significant strategic alliance anytime soon.