spin88

The problem is demand. Looking at SFO-NYC, areas of respectively 8.5M and 20.3M. There are currently only 5 non-stops on Thu 5/14. Thursday is a busy business travel day.

AS is running a 739 into JFK, 6F, 37Y showing as booked.
As is running a 739 into EWR - 3F, 21Y
UA is running a 788 14J, 75 Y/PE
UA is running a 738 11F, 43Y
UA is running a 738 12F, 30Y.

[I am just counting isle and window seats, its possible that a few of the middle for related families are booked]

The idea suggested by some that "flights are full, the airlines need to pack them" is just crazy talk. Given the spare capacity of every airline (UA is probably using 10% of it's fleet right now, maybe 15%) for the airlines to survive they don't need to run full flights, they need to get people to start to travel again.

The reality is that a hard and fast rule - like DL and AS have - of not selling middle seats unless you are related costs almost nothing. Or Absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. United is paying for the planes & labor, they are sitting, just sitting. It is quite easy to add a larger plane if United thinks they are going to get close to being full w/o using the middle seats. Hell UA can even add a section for basically the landing fees and fuel cost.

And doing this makes people comfortable to fly (or more comfortable to fly) which is far, far more important than a few extra fares on a flight. The 20 extra people you jam onto that one plane, and the social media and now REAL mediat backlash, will cause thousands or tens of thousands who are flying right now not to take UA flights the rest of the time.

The reality is that this is just crappy management and lack of imagination by Kirby and his band of Smisik left-overs. It takes a little work - gotta get revenue management to project when you are approaching the limit, up size the flight. United has just not adjusted how it schedules to address the new reality. And rather than adjusting, it just put out a policy which says "we will put someone 8" from your face, and if you don't like it, we will put you on a flight on next Tuesday that looks better"

Airlines that are flying at less density - and promising to do so - will get more of the limited traffic and this will carry over into the fall when the CARES Act $$$ runs out.

HNLbasedFlyer

With numbers like that - I don't see why anybody would think AS is doing better than UA. Even with a blocked middle policy - the numbers for them look terrible.

spin88

This is a core route for UA between two major hubs, connecting to international fights. That AS can get similar load on two flights that UA gets on three is sort of amazing to me.

The problem (IMHO) is that UA is just trying to down size to the point that it creates situations where people will fear to fly. That is a real problem when - as recently - social media/media figure out that United is jamming people into middle seats to the potentially infected person is 8" from your face....

CALMSP

well, you never prefaced your postings, "I think they should have done this or that, instead you were saying UA failed, UA didn't do this or that right". its interpreted a little differently. But regardless, UA essentially did nothing wrong and broke no guidelines (hey, even I think all airlines should have shut down for a 2 week period to potentially contain better)

HNLbasedFlyer

I'm not sure how similar was arrived at - AS is flying 67 passengers over 2 flights. UA has more than that on just the first flight.

threeoh

What international flights? Ok, fine, there are still some (<10) int'l flights operating with light loads to countries with strict travel restrictions, but not sure international flights are putting a lot of butts in seats on the feeder domestic flights these days like they usually do. O&D and domestic connections are likely the vast majority of NYC<->SFO traffic.

uastarflyer

That was the initial response to Dao.

Why are they changing their tune? (Note - this is still not good enough)

zombietooth

Perhaps you missed these stories:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...navirus-199646

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...y-communities/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/clima...s/?arc404=true

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/20...-coronavirus-/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/opini...ked/index.html

Since I have been traveling so much lately, I've had to listen to hours of cable news out of boredom, sitting in lounges and airports, and have heard plenty of stories about climate change being a far greater threat than SARS-CoV-2.

Nonetheless, wasting fuel, with no scientific basis behind the "keeping middle seats open" argument, is stupid. Show me some study that indicates that empty middles decreases virus transmission. Sadly, this is another case of Kabuki theater just like the TSA "security theater" screening process. It's designed as a marketing gimmick to make pax feel better and hopefully garner more business than your competitors. Wastefulness is never a virtue, my friend.

uastarflyer

Politico? On the UA board? or anywhere?

By your argument UA should stop the extra cleaning and deep cleaning cycles. Marketing fluff to convince scared sheep to come back.

Plus, tying things back to your other rant, some of those chemicals (and disposing all those gloves and masks each flight) aren’t green!!

WineCountryUA

Folks, this discussion is headed off into OMNI land, let's pull back to a UA focus.

WineCountryUA
UA coModerator

zombietooth

If you had read that reference, you would've seen that the UN was making that pronouncement, not Politico-it was just reporting. I also provided links to articles in Scientific American, The Washington Post and CNN.

The difference is that there is strong scientific evidence that common soaps, using lipophilic chemicals, actually destroy the viability of the virus. "Kill" would not pertain here because viruses are not alive, they are really just instruction sets, like little bot programs, that require a living host cell to multiply.

See here:

https://scitechdaily.com/does-soap-a...emistry-video/

So, UA's cleaning program actually is beneficial.

JNelson113

Yes, sealed drinks were given plus choice of snack.

I flew DEN-IAH yesterday and 31 standbys were cleared at the gate, again causing almost every seat to be occupied.

azepine00

Should be quite obvious - the closer you are to the source of infection the more exposure you get. 6 ft is better that 2 ft, 2 ft better than shoulder to shoulder.
Sealed snacks, organized boarding and deplaning, cleaning between flights - all help a little bit.
Nothing is a perfect solution - we are playing percentages until this thing is supressed and we are back to normal.

zombietooth

This was my experience with 4 flights so far this week-lots of standbys fill the seats. I've taken 12 flights (segments) over the last two weeks and every one was full.
Anyone flying in the near future should have no expectation of an open middle. I have scored a few CPUs though.

Silver Fox

Yes! Finally! Upgrades are easier to get!