bocastephen

They used to do, certainly Continental did ~20 years ago, and I enjoyed my time in BusinessFirst on those DC10s. However your question seems to ignore the current and future impact of coronavirus on the travel industry. What any airline did from Jan 2020 and prior is now irrelevant - there is new world now and airlines need to find a way to adjust to the reality of drastically lower business travel, with recovering leisure travel. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is by removing capacity and frequency, and since all the airlines are in the same boat, suffering the same loss of volume, it's not like United would cut a few flights and Delta will suddenly add 5 more. The pie is smaller, so everyone needs to take a smaller slice and the best option is rolling 6+ 737 flights into 2-3 777/787 flights.

It was done this way before, it can be done this way again, and if the volume truly comes back many years in the future, they can adjust yet again. As mentioned upthread, should virus strains start poking around the vaccines, and the risk of infection persist with updated vaccines and booster shots being rushed out with every new strain taking hold, the world of today will continue to be the world of tomorrow and all bets are off.

jsloan

The topic of the thread is a "premium travel option for leisure travelers." Domestic F is not a premium travel option.

Agreed on both counts, but only if you believe that business travel will return. There is not sufficient demand for leisure travel in J. Honestly -- UA can't likely operate its current fleet without business travel. Without the high fares from price-insensitive travelers, they won't be able to afford to subsidize price-sensitive travelers, and they'll end up losing both.

I mean, I guess? But at some point, a lounge is really just a reasonably quiet place at an airport. How much do you really think people will pay?

There may be a new world now. There may not be. People have been forecasting the death of business travel for at least 10 years.

This might be a realistic option in a few targeted markets. Overall, though, it's not practical. You can't compete as a hub-and-spoke carrier without sufficiently-frequent lift to your hubs. On IAH-AUS, yes, they can probably fly five 787s instead of 12 737s/A3xx, but on most of their routes, you're not running frequent enough service to be able to consolidate it the way you're describing.

Anyway, if you're right about the end of business travel, then (a) UA is going to start taking out rows of domestic F, squeezing E+ together by another inch, and try to fit one more row onto the plane, and (b) you're not going to see 737s replaced by 787s. You'll see 737s replaced by E75s, to as great a degree as the contract allows.

No; people's patience is already pushed nearly to the limit.

JimInOhio

The is the non-free market view of the airline industry. Zoom, Webex, MS Teams, etc. aren't innovations killing business travel. COVID-19 is. Video conferencing has been around for a few years and audio conference calls have been around far longer.

Most businesses have competition. In fact, about the only ones without competition are those in markets where few wish to play. Right now, my competitors aren't physically visiting customers, who generally aren't accepting visitors due to health concerns anyway. When my competition starts visiting my customers face-to-face, you can bet my company is going to find a way to respond that goes beyond making another phone call or scheduling another video conference. Right now is not that time, though, but this won't last forever.

phkc070408

Considering we (wifey and I) paid close to 2X as much to travel on an open jaw EWR-SFO-SAN / SFO-EWR rather than just doing EWR-SAN / SFO-EWR in November 2021, I have to say the answer is yes.

Completely agree, however given the surplus of aircraft currently parked, no airline is in any position to be buying new aircraft to exactly meat their needs. This is an opportunity to reduce your inventory on existing aircraft to move the supply curve to the left a little, while using what you already have.

So your way has lower costs and lower revenues. My way has higher costs and higher revenues. What we don't know is who's revenues are superior to the costs. If international travel never returns ( as in > 4-5 years), this is something worth exploring.