N104UA

There is also a high mileage usage on Hawaii flights and I rarely see Saver Fares on these flights in J, it is also a great way for UA to get miles off their books.

Unitedloyalflyer

I've noticed that as well. Would cost more than 200,000 miles RT for IAH-HNL. Would rather pay the cash and use the miles elsewhere.

Shows the demand for long haul J on the HI flights.

I almost wonder if an international F would work long haul Hawaii flights. F seems to be more rich people on vacation these days vs business travelers, so maybe it would be a viable cabin a HI is a premium leisure market?

N104UA

I have wondered this as well and there is discussion up thread about making HI a true Polaris service for the LH HI flights, but I don't think that will happen.

I also think many people earn miles and plan to use it for vacation and Hawaii is almost 100% leisure whereas most of Europe is a mix of leisure and business. I don't know if it is true (although it seems to make sense) but I was once told that airlines lose money on many Hawaii flights due to the number of award tickets redeemed on Hawaii flights.

Unitedloyalflyer

I think the bolded is true as well. Maybe limited government and military travel, but that is likely in Y.

Given it is mostly leisure is why I think an actual F product would work, since next to no companies pay for F these days. Maybe a 12 seat F cabin and a larger PP cabin. Could only see this working on the HNL, OGG and PPT routes though (the very high end leisure routes)

N104UA

If you look at the seat map for almost any ORD/DEN/EWR/IAH/IAD-Hawaii bound flight the first class cabin with 30-60 seats is almost completely full with very few clearing on the upgrade list. I think UA would be shooting themselves in the foot if they did a first class cabin with less than a 30 seat cabin as there clearly is demand there for F to Hawai'i.

For a DP here are yesterday's HNL bound flights and cleared UGs.
EWR (B772)- Full with 0UG
IAD (B764) Full with 0UG
ORD (B77W) Full with 7UG
IAH (B772) Full with 2UG
DEN (B772) Full with 5UG
DEN (B763) Full with 2UG

That is 279 first class seats going out and only 16 cleared upgrades (on non-CPU routes) or 94% of F seats not showing on the UG list.

MBS MillionMiler

I like your methodology and your work and am in total agreement with you on the lack of premium options to the islands, still. I, like you also hope for more Polaris and PP seats to Hawai'i. While understanding this isn't scientific but does demonstrate the trend, I'll add that that those upgraded ~2 days (or longer) before departure are no longer showing on any upgrade list (all flights; mainline/express, domestic/intl/HI, instrument-supported or CPU), nor will you see award folks, whether Saver or Standard awards. Certainly skews the numbers, but no idea by how much (assuming not much at all).

WineCountryUA

Early upgrades or forced GS conversions do not show as neither do awards.

Unitedloyalflyer

I was talking a small international F cabin, not the current J product branded as first.

Maybe UA could have not reconfigured some of the older planes with F and deployed them on the Hawaii routes. 8F seats and 40J (if we need a lie flat J to go with F instead of just a PP cabin). I do agree that there is strong demand for premium cabin tickets to HI and the talk of only including 24 premium cabin seats because it is a leisure market is misguided

jsloan

A few hundred dollars? The Polaris lounge is fine, but there's no airline lounge in the world that's worth a few hundred dollars to access. Especially for a local resident, who doesn't need to kill time during a connection. The IAH-HNL flight is a morning departure -- use the hundreds of dollars for a nice breakfast and a limo ride to the airport, and you'd still come out ahead.

Very few carriers have found international F profitable on any route, anywhere in the world. The carriers that offer it are either excluding the cabin from their newer plane orders (SQ, LH), shrinking it (SQ again), removing it entirely (UA, OZ), or have no particular need to turn a profit (EK, QR). AA's obviously an exception, but they're also a horribly mismanaged airline, so I'm not sure I'd be looking to them for guidance.

The basic problem is that the business class hard product got to be too good, so there's less of an incentive for anyone to fly F. Sure, the United First seat was better than the Polaris seat, but not so much better that people were willing to pay a significant premium.

As for trying to use it on leisure routes -- a few issues:

1. You're begging for trouble if you have too small of a subfleet equipped with F; it really limits the flexibility you have in route planning, and heaven help you if an aircraft or two are out of service. Even if there is a market for flights to OGG/HNL/PPT, that's not enough flights to make it practical.
2. You absolutely cannot judge future demand for premium leisure travel by current numbers. You're looking at a large amount of pent-up demand and a small number of available destinations. A lot of people who would otherwise have been going to Australia or Asia are going to Hawaii this summer just because it's open.
3. UA has a particularly high-density J cabin. Comparing UA, SQ, and AA's 77Ws: between doors 1 and 2, AA and SQ both have 8 F and 8 J seats. UA has 28 J seats. So, you're looking at replacing 20 J seats with 8 F seats, meaning that just to break even, you're going to need fares that are 2.5x the average J fare. Just because UA can sell 60 seats at $2K doesn't mean that they can sell 8 seats at $5K and 40 seats at $2K.
4. UA's soft product is not up to international F standards, and there's no particular reason to believe that it could be. If you search the archives, you'll find plenty of derisive posts about the soup -- which was the only difference between the F and J offerings when UA still had F.
5. Pre-COVID, there were already complaints about the Polaris lounges being too crowded during peak departure windows. (And there's no Polaris Lounge in HNL, OGG, or PPT anyway).

I suspect you're judging the market by your own preferences, but given your first comment above, I'm not convinced that you're representative of their customer base.

HNLbasedFlyer

American Airlines just added lounge access to long haul Hawaii flights for first class passengers - wonder if UA will follow - making the news locally here in Honolulu.

American Airlines Adds Lounge Access For Hawaii Flights | One Mile at a Time

American Airlines now offers Flagship Lounge or Admirals Club access for first class passengers traveling nonstop between the following city pairs:

• Dallas (DFW) and Honolulu (HNL)
• Dallas (DFW) and Kona (KOA)
• Dallas (DFW) and Maui (OGG)
• Chicago (ORD) and Honolulu (HNL)
• Charlotte (CLT) and Honolulu (HNL)

N104UA

I always caution people about getting too detailed about numerous sub-fleets, UA could easily do that and copy BA and LH with EuroBiz and be able to "right size" the F cabin on every flight by just moving a curtain.

The UA fleet planners have way more data than anyone here on FT could ever dream about and have figured out what right size F/J cabin is needed on each plane, for instance a few years ago when they increased the 319 F cabin to 12, there was a lot of data behind the reason to do that.

uastarflyer

Then why are they publicly reversing on AVOD
Cut back Lie flats in the 788
Added a few extra lieflats in the domestic 777 IIRC

Just in the past year

Their data prowess is a bit overstated. Or they don’t make sound decisions even with awesome data.

They can absolutely sell a richer mix than what the domestic 777 allows. Let’s see what they do with that data.

N104UA

They can sell a richer mix, but can they do so more profitably. Between doors 1 and 2 on the 788 there are 20 Business seats between doors 3 and 4 (which is a similar floor space) there are 98 economy seats. So the opportunity cost to adding additional economy seats is 4.9 economy seats for each business seat, the question is can UA sell each incremental J seat at 4.9x the cost of an economy seat not just can they sell a richer mix

Micp3208

I would say the changes they made are to allow for better utilization and profit margins on aircraft like the 788. Remove some Polaris and add Premium Plus makes the aircraft better suited for their plans. The domestic 777’s should certainly be changed up for revenue and comfort!

jsloan

Huh?

I mean, sure, they could do that, although I can't imagine why they would. But the question was about adding international F, which pretty much requires its own seats.