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Delta Removing Business Class on Three Routes in Europe:
By Julian Mark Kheel. November 19th, 2017
https://thepointsguy.com/2017/11/del...-class-europe/

Well, now we know where Delta is getting those 757-200s. At roughly the same time the airline is adding Delta One service domestically, it will pull its premium cabin from the following three routes between the US and Europe:

• New York (JFK) and Reykjavik, Iceland (KEF)
• New York (JFK) and Shannon, Ireland (SNN) — seasonal from May 3 to October 1
• New York (JFK) and Ponta Delgada, Portugal (PDL) — seasonal from May 24 to September 2

To replace the aircraft, Delta will add domestically configured 757-200s on those routes. And unfortunately domestic 757s don’t have flat-bed seats, Instead, the planes employ far less luxurious first class recliners that can’t in good faith be called international first class or even business class.

So rather than sell these seats as business class, Delta is instead selling them as “Premium Select”:


My question based on the article show above:
With new PE offerings, is United going to do the same and replace traditional Business Class on shorter international routes? I am thinking it could be a possibly in Northern South America, the Caribbean, Latin America, and even the Micronesia flights?

samjnz

Ultimately a true PE product is much the same as domestic first class (on other carriers at least) so probably wouldn’t be a difference on these routes already served by 737s etc

dmurphynj

chermorg

I'm not sure I'd call it unusual, I've seen various 752s and a few 753s into MCO - but they usually come on a routing from the west coast/hawaii routes (ex: N57863 which recently went SFO-DEN-LAX-ORD and now is doing an overnight ORD-MCO run (coming back this morning). I'm wondering if there's some maintenance reason that they keep sending the 753's all the way to MCO from the west? It'd make more sense to me (assuming they have the availability, which i would presume they would) to take a 772 domestic or a 763/4 from EWR-ORD-MCO-ORD-EWR on the busy days.

Point being - it's not *super* rare to see a 753 making it to MCO from my recollection. Whether any of them start making the longer treks EWR/IAD-Europe is anyone's guess.

*edit* I've also watched a couple come into and out of DCA from their slot-limited routes (mainly DEN), I presume for capacity.

dmurphynj

As I recall, MCO is/was a pmCO maintenance base for the 757's... Assuming that means both variants. If they were RON'ing the birds overnight at MCO, that'd make sense. But in my case (ship 3858 it looks like) is going to do a quick turn today through MCO - sched arrive 1:47p, depart 2:50p. That's quick for a 750 row narrow body. (Or, it feels like 750 rows anyway...). And certainly no time for maintenance...

So not sure what the current rotation is all about, just mildly unusual to see it. Anyway, back to the original point... wonder if there's any long-term plans to add some lie flats to these 753's and add them to the domestic "premium transcon" fleet? But they serve a bit of a unique mission; about the same seat capacity as a 788 at almost half the empty weight. So where you need the lift but not the distance of a 788 (i.e. transcon)... it's a very economical bird. I thought I had read somewhere that it had one of United's lowest overall CASM. I can only imagine, however, that thing is a nightmare for the inflight crew...

chermorg

Maybe an added capacity? It's going DEN-MCO-EWR-DEN then overnighting in DEN and doing the same thing. Your guess is as good as mine there.

That's kinda what I'm getting at is instead of pulling intl 752s for domestic premium, why would they not just retrofit their 753s? Others are right that the 752s are better set for international travel anyway (due to range and other requirements) and so it would make more sense for their very out of place 753s (they're the widebody that's not a widebody) to be relegated to domestic premium transcon - it'd decrease their capacity, making boarding faster, but still be able to operate fine out of many (but not all) narrowbody gates. Considering how many 753s they have, and the fact they already fly them on DCA-DEN sometimes, it would be interesting (but likely a pipe dream) to see them retrofit some as p.s. and fly them on their once daily DCA-DEN and once daily DCA-SFO. If they did this, and were able to get another slot exemption from someone for DCA-LAX, they'd basically own transcons out of DC. They could do that now from IAD, but that won't be feasible until the silver line is fully completed, and even then I'm not sure people will take a 30+ minute metro ride just to take PS flights. /shrug

dmurphynj

chermorg

Yep, dmurphynj's right and I need more coffee. Regardless, given that the 762s are completely long gone, you *certainly* wouldn't want the 763s going transcon in anywhere near their current pre-polaris state haha

dmurphynj

EWR764

Ouch... I have 4x flights on UA1740 over the next few weeks (1 down) and fingers crossed this is just a one- (or two) off.

As an aside, I noticed that UA has cut capacity on EWR-DEN quite a bit this winter. Last year the morning EWR-DEN and evening DEN-EWR (314) were 77H, now 738/9, and there's no eastbound redeye except for holiday periods. There are a few more 752s in the mix, but I would guess in the ballpark of 250 fewer seats per day than last year.

sbm12

The 77H used to route HNL-DEN-EWR-SJU and back when UA needed the 777 in SJU for the cargo contract it had. With most of the pharma in Puerto Rico still offline (that's what drove the cargo) not too surprising UA is reallocating the plane.

EWR764

Though UA continues to offer containerized freight capability to SJU with a 764 on the EWR flight. I suspect cargo in/out of SJU might be of a different nature these days, and perhaps more southbound-oriented.