eponymous_coward

Why would you fly JFK-SFO/LAX-Asia in paid UA p.s./intl F instead of an Asian carrier on JFK/EWR-Asia (or even CO)?

I can see why you'd do it on an award redemption, but if I'm spending a bunch of cash for the seat at the front of the plane... I'm adding 6 hours of flying time so you can experience UA p.s. and UA intercontinental F as opposed to NH, OZ or SQ, all of whom are options out of NYC? Or I could fly CO? Or I could even connect at IAD/ORD?

That is, until the former CO management now in charge of UA goes "Um, wait a minute: we're mostly giving these F seats away? Why exactly?" and redoes the p.s. fleet to be more like DL's 757s on the JFK/SFO route: enhanced F @ 16 seats with 50ish inch pitch and more modern seating + upgraded amenities, Y+ and Y, as entropy suggests.

IMO, this is bad news for people who like being able to fly AA and UA's 3-class service for cheap, though I suspect AA will ditch theirs first: those 762s they fly on AFS routes have to be complete gas hogs and getting close to the end of their usable life, and a lot of that J cabin is upgrading.

FriendlySkies

On the CNBC program, Inside American Airlines, they said that on a transcon flight, after expenses, they only made $200 from the flight..

AADC10

AA has a lot more 3 class F seats LAX-JFK than UA does. I doubt the actor's contract will cause UA to end p.s. service. It is one of the most important business transcon routes in the country and there are a lot of other industries that shuttle between L.A. and New York. NYC is the banking center of the U.S. and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach receive much of the imports from China, which is just about anything consumers buy in a store these days.

There are not even very many domestic routes with three class service. Aside from JFK-LAX/SFO, the rest are AA and UA hub-to-hub repositioning flights. The number of actors that fly in F only because of the contract are probably fairly small. Most character, unknown or little known actors are local or would fly to location which is rarely in New York. Established actors would be able to demand F and big stars get to use the studio jet.

aCavalierInCoach

Quite a bit of paid premium traffic from the financial/biz communities in each of these cities. I wouldn't be opposed to knocking out PS F if they were able to get an extra row of C in, to be honest...

UDU would be nice, but it would definitely be associated with the end of the PS moniker.

cerealmarketer

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Indeed lots of paid premium from financial services -- at business class fares. F in 3 class is out of policy for many banks now unless J is sold out.

Really hope the new UA doesn't downsize the number of premium seats on the route.

How are paid loads (not upgrade) in UA flyers' estimation on PS C/F?

Coninental out of Newark is so tight you can rarely book a seat last minute let alone change flights -- which inplicitly ruins a key benefit of premium fares -- flexibility.

uchuuace

p.s. SFO-JFK is my favorite domestic flight in the system, so would be sad to see p.s. go away, but I doubt this alone would be the factor to make the business no longer viable.

I think there is enough, shall we say, "money" in the areas to make it work. Around Thanksgiving I shelled out for Z class I had to get because there was no NC space and C was getting filled up and I had to sit next to my companion on an award ticket. So while this isn't the purchase of a 3-class F seat, it's still a Z which you can't get standalone on a 2-class plane. And for reference, that flight had on,y one unsold F seat left, too!

entropy

CO is very tough to get premium availability inside of 2 weeks on EWR-SFO/LAX, which is part of why I think that PS needs to be expanded to EWR as well. (But CO also charges <half of what UA does for PS..)

SFOtoORD

Could be unique to AA with their 762s. Too many coach seats to sell for $200 on a long flight plus a gas guzzler.

FWAAA

Yes, on that particular flight, on that particular day, AA claimed a mere $200 profit. Many AA 762 transcon flights net much more than that, and others show a net loss.