Kacee

Wow where are they getting the aircraft???

764toHI

Seriously, with the forthcoming Polaris retrofits on the 763s and 772s and the increased frequencies on the summer schedule, it seems like the 752 fleet will be stretched thin.

ermintrude

Can anyone confirm that SFO-BOS will be branded as PS?

CappuccinoAddict

Nothing confirmed yet but there has been talk of the ps branding being replaced with something else. My hunch is that they will roll out the new branding concurrently with the addition of BOS-SFO.

kb1992

How many planes do they need?

Two 772?
Four 752?

Will CPU be discontinued for BOS-SFO?

777HD has very bad Y/F ratio. 336 Y and 28 F.

This makes upgrade nearly impossible.

FlyHighInTheSky

That's awesome if this is true. However, I suspect this means we will see less 752's in other markets (i.e. IAD-SFO). 😕

NH_Clark

I like it! If dependable, I'll be dropping my Mint flights.

findark

The table remains differentially fared at $299 for the moment, although there are also some non-differential First fares which are presumably entered to match the B6 Mint fares. They also seem to have a moratorium on advance P space; at least I can't find any at all. This leaves HAZ01UPN ($649 ai, 1-day AP) at the common fare. The 77Gs seem to be blocked up to A.

This. I thought p.s. was already stressed enough for aircraft, and now they can pull some of the 75K fleet onto SFO/BOS? I'm wondering whether this coincides with a slight reduction of schedule, maybe to LAX.

I'm also deeply worried about the implications of the 77G here. Forget upgrades, are we looking at a market future where UA will try to sell only profitable $1k+ F tickets, and be able to do that with such a tiny F cabin? I suppose as long as the TOD offer exists this won't happen, and I don't really know if the market supports it. But the ratio of the 77G is.. spooky.

WineCountryUA

As lie-flat is the main feature and the gap ebtween PS and Transcon meals has narrowed, no sure this matters that much -- and with the rumors the "PS branding" is changing, it would provide room for some inclusion.

Once a route is 100% lie-flat, UA has removed CPU eligibility.

PsiFighter37

Taking a look at a random weekday (July 12, 2017), I see:

EWR-LAX: 11x (4x sCO 752, 5x sUA p.s. 752, 2x(!) HD 772)
EWR-SFO: 14x (5x sCO 752, 7x sUA p.s. 752, 2x(!) HD 772)
BOS-SFO: 7x (1x sCO 752, 4x sUA p.s. 752, 2x(!) HD 772)

The returns (LAX-EWR, SFO-EWR, SFO-BOS) all have the same frequencies and ratio of birds being used.

The CLEAR takeaway is that the HD 772s are going to be employed on p.s. routes (which was speculated as something that could happen when the sUA 752s get retired), but it is being done earlier as part of extending lie-flat (p.s., if you want to call it that) to SFO-BOS (LAX-BOS is still only 2x daily, and on 739s on the day I looked at above). Clearly an upgrade for BOS-bound folks, but a downgrade for the standard p.s. service. It appears the HD 772s will basically be used to maintain frequency - and if anything, add more Y capacity to these routes.

While I applaud UA extending better product to more destinations, this is chipping away (again) at a part of the market that they used to be market leaders on...definitely would not want to be stuck in Y on the HD birds for a TCON...

entropy

chipping away at BOS-LAX? they seem to not care as much about that, and presumably they want to leverage the Asian SFO connections.

How is it a downgrade for standard PS?

777HD is a lot of capacity in Y too. But its great news for BOS.

PsiFighter37

Chipping away at NYC- West Coast premium service. You have a worse J configuration (2-4-2 is worse than 2-2), and 10-abreast in Y - clearly worse.

adambadam

I don't think many people remember the original PS configuration had only E+ and it was truly marketed as a special flight whether in F, J, or Y. Of course in the long run E- was added and meals were stripped away when the market wouldn't allow UA to actually charge a premium price.

wxguy

The same staff who provided the rumor (original post) said there would be no CPUs.

PsiFighter37

Makes 100% complete sense. I think it is fair to say that if the flights are loaded in as I mentioned previously, this is going to become a premium TCON route that will be treated just like EWR-SFO/LAX.

Good for BOS flyers, bad for everyone flying EWR-SFO/LAX that will now get jammed into an HD 772 a couple times each day.

Separately - looking at the 16 RT flights that are flown by the p.s. 752s...I really don't see how they are going to replace them when they have to retire them next year.