Dublin_rfk

EWR764

Reckless? Hardly. To put it differently, any given United flight is on sale for approximately 11 months. Historical buying patterns suggest about 90% of passengers book inside of three months prior to departure, leaving about 8 months over which to spread that remaining 10% of bookings. Of that 10% making ultra-advance purchases, it skews toward price-sensitive leisure travelers and those redeeming award travel, again, generally in leisure markets. Of that tiny minority of passengers, you're drilling down further to an even smaller subset passengers who are making their purchasing decisions based on aircraft type and configuration. It's just not a large enough (or valuable enough) cohort of travelers to chase with any special treatment vis-a-vis scheduling.

You're also assuming the presence of the 77W in certain markets is driving bookings in its own right. While that may be true, to a certain extent, I don't think it's a significant value, especially in concert with the foregoing.

Finally, the 77W is high-capacity airplane. Macroeconomic factors and geopolitical circumstances can very easily turn a route operated with the high trip costs of a 77W from a moneymaker to a massive cash burner. No doubt UA is seeing how forward bookings (as compared to prior years) and exogenous factors are shaping up to determine where its highest-capacity frames should be deployed. As an extreme example, this time last year, I'm sure plenty of people thought the United States could very well be at war with North Korea by winter 2018/19. That sort of regional instability is meaningful for airline capacity decisions.

spartacusmcfly

Yes, I am. Not so much the 77W, but the Polaris seat -- which just happens to be on the 77W. If UA didn't believe the seat drives bookings, why the massive Polaris marketing campaign over the past three years? Airline profitability is more sensitive to revenue from the forward cabins. Why not put your best foot forward -- why hide 1/3 of your best forward inventory. Anyway, we'll see. We're a few weeks away from the 90 day window. At that point, let's see if all the missing Polaris inventory shows up.

EWR764

I think the point is United generally doesn't sell business class seats this far in advance.

Going back into the archives, the biggest schedule loads for W17 came on 22JUL, 29JUL and 12AUG of last year. Lots of equipment swaps (over 2 dozen) from the placeholder schedules. I'd expect something similar this year.

Keep in mind the IATA Northern Winter season technically starts on 28OCT... that's usually the cutover date for major equipment and schedule changes. I know UA is really pushing to have its FA groups on an integrated scheduling platform by then.

bocastephen

People who book business class certainly consider the hard and soft product in their decision, and certainly for my own clients, this is a major consideration. Since there is a massive, vast difference in quality between a UA (non PMCO) 772 seat and a Polaris seat, I can say both for my clients and myself, losing Polaris on a route would result in booking away to a partner or competitor for sure.

WineCountryUA

plus 2 in progress and likely a couple more by Q4.

The decision also to do Premium Economy (^) has perhaps slowed things initially but the end product is going to be a vast improving (sans F cabin) over the 8 across IPTE product.

There is likely to be 2x the Polaris seat equipped aircraft by Q4 versus Q1 -- lots of possibilities for High-Value routes

sbm12

Some in this community are a part of the very small minority of travelers who plan around such things. Pretending that FT is a good representation of the broader travel world is somewhere between myopic and delusional.
Your client base is how large??

Not trying to rain on your parade but the vast majority of travelers - business class or otherwise - don't book based on these factors.

bocastephen

FT is a good representation of the broader world of premium category flyers - those with more disposable income and a willingness to seek out and spend on premium products and experiences....not so much the category of travelers who think Spirit and Allegiant are 'da bomb'. So, our group is certainly a canary in the coalmine for those who buy Polaris or similar products, certainly on their own dime vs the other small majority who might be assigned to a UA flight by a corp travel dept without their input.

EWR764

I don't think this thread needs to turn into another referendum on FT's dissatisfaction of the pace of the Polaris rollout.

Every year, the months leading up to a season change are filled with schedule adjustments, equipment swaps, frequency adds/cuts, etc. Perhaps it's a little more meaningful this year because UA only has its new J product installed on a portion of the fleet, but this entire discussion is very ado about nothing. The (growing) 77W fleet will be fully scheduled, in time, and perhaps we'll even see a dedicated Polaris 767 route with the three-cabin conversion program nearing completion and the fleet reaching the critical mass to support such an operation.

Business as usual... I realize one of the major bloggers made a pretty breathless post today about this issue, which is probably why it's drawing so much attention. Let's revisit things in a few weeks, shall we?

HkCaGu

NRT is a sUA FA base, and it's them operating NRT-EWR. Come October, The Merge will mean somewhat of an invasion of currently sCO EWR international routes, e.g. HKG-EWR wll see sUA HKG FA base working. Up till now, EWR has limited 77W routes because of staffing.

Kacee

Slow news day

I seem to recall similar concerns expressed last year at SFO 77W routes going back to 772 before the schedule was updated.

But if you're referring to my post, I was commenting in the context of how that might affect aircraft assignments (which I believe to be a legitimate question).

sbm12

I strongly disagree with this position.

EWR764

adambrau

I don't think United is going accelerate fleet allocation decisions based on you and your clients. For the reasons the UA insiders have mentioned above.

bocastephen

I never said they would, or suggested they should - my statement, which I continue to stand by as accurate, implies that premium category customers who make their own travel decisions and spend their own money will book towards Polaris and away from IPTE to a partner or competitor when a route has been downgraded or upgraded and the fares are reasonable equivalent. This is especially true when a route currently using the 773 is downgraded. It doesn't imply cabins will be empty, especially given the vast complexities of airfares - the Polaris cabin on a given flight could be filled with people paying anywhere from a $900 P fare to a $8000 J fare for that very same segment depending on their point of origin and time of booking. The P fare person may not go anywhere, but the J fare person, if they are aware of the seating differences, probably would.