HKG

Looking at the general UA seatmap vs an actual reservation flight seatmap on 737-700 UA1108 on Dec 20th from IAH to SEA, it is only showing 2 rows of first class, is UA cutting one row of first class on the 737-700 or it is showing an A319 but the last row of economy row only to Row 31, so it doesn't match with the row number on A319 either. Any Idea?

JOSECONLSCREW28

No the 737-700s aren't getting a row of F removed.

mduell

It's the weekend - many (most? every?) weekends the aircraft types on the website get scrambled - Q400s across the Atlantic, seatmaps that don't match the aircraft type, etc.

Long standing glitch dating back to the PMCO days, where the res system and website were inherited from.

mherdeg

Placeholder seat map.

Not always a "weekend equipment swap" thing; can also mean "we do not know what kind of plane this will be yet" thing.

In the "not sure what kind of plane yet" situation, UA hasn't yet decided for sure whether they want to use an A319 or a 737-700 on the route. While they're unsure, UA publishes a "pessimal" seat map which only has seats that will *definitely* exist no matter what flavor of narrowbody they end up allocating.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/22197032-post65.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...questions.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...iguration.html

SandLake

Does this aircraft configuration actually exist? What is the reason/purpose for planning a flight using it?

will2288

Not according to United.com or SeatGuru.

But there are A319s with 8 F seats. Good for routes with little paid F travel. UA would rather have more Y seats instead of F seats that it would not sell at good prices and only give away to elites or cheap upgrades.

SandLake

Sorry I should have listed the flight!

MCO-EWR 16th May @ 17:20. it's showing as a 737-700 with 2 rows of (4) First seats but as will2288 says it doesn't exist according to United or Seatguru.

United must plan at some point to change it to a real aircraft but I would have thought that it would be more sensible to specify a real aircraft configuration from the outset.

sbm12

It makes more sense to use a baseline config that won't be oversold one way or the other until they decide what type of plane to actually put on the route. That way no one loses a seat they've purchased.

SandLake

Ah OK, I see what you are saying

flyingnosh

Interesting. Is the 737-700 the lowest common denominator of all UA mainline aircraft? Or perhaps of all sCO mainline aircraft? If it were an sUA route, perhaps they would have just scheduled an A319 as a placeholder.

Kacee

All UA 319's have 8 F seats. That's just the way UA had them configured when it bought them. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether a particular route has heavy demand for paid F.

Air Houston

It will probably be switched to an A319.

On one particular flight that I take about every other month the website always shows the 737-700 with two rows of First Class until a month or so before the flight, then it switches to an A319 (and different flight number, of course). This has happened several times over the second half of 2014.

On the return flight from the same trip the website always shows a 737-700 with three rows of First Class and that particular flight is always operated by that aircraft.

I find this extremely odd, and believe it must be one of the contributing factors to the poor operational performance of United since the merger. Too many changes, too many swaps, too many customers losing seats and being moved, requiring the check-in agents and gate agents to need to spend extra time "fixing" seats, too many ramp agents at an outstation not realizing that on Tuesday a flight that is normally an A319 is a 737-900 and will take more baggage carts to unload so the bags take forever to arrive at baggage claim. And so on, and so on, and so on.

I realize matching capacity to demand is smart business, but it puts a strain on operations that clearly has not been resolved yet.

Please United...recognize that your employees are struggling to provide the level of service your customers expect...and you are not making it easy on them.

Bear96

I have a domestic trip booked this summer. Just noticed the seats for my partner and me on one of the segments were changed from 2EF to 1EF. Fortunately 2EF were still available so I changed it back, but while doing that I noticed the seat map showed only 2 rows in F and 31 in Y for this aircraft, which doesn't match any seating charts I could find on either Seatguru or the United website. It is showing as a 737-700 in the reservation.

So what kind of plane is this? Will it have IFE? Why isn't it showing on the website? Seems odd.

transportprof

Didn't United recently lease some used 737-700s? I wonder if they came with a different seating configuration?

Bear96

I don't know. I have not heard of a United aircraft in many years that has only two rows in F, so that is what piqued my curiosity.