Certainly, this is nice for you if you're the person reclining back 50% more. However, with only 4" additional pitch, I don't believe it is really so nice if you're in the seat behind the guy who is reclining the seat 50% more. But just my opinion.

And it's entirely possible a more-comfortable seat as well. UA gets me more legroom, but I've been in Y seats on many other airlines that were more comfortable. Even WN is more comfortable (to me) than the typical UA seat with its flattened cushions and height/headrest/whatever that seems designed just perfectly to annoy my 6' frame.

The 777 seat feels a bit like that but all others are just fine for my 6' frame. LH and QF always find a way to put ever more displeasing chairs in their cabins though.

Add CX to that list, although they are switching out the fixed shell seats in Y to something else....

I recently had fixed shell seats on KE and I was pleasantly surprised. Best of all I didn't need to worry about the seatback in front of me. I can handle low pitch numbers, just not the reclining into my space.

I wonder what the Y seats are like in the LH 380? LH claims they've come up with a breakthrough design that effectively adds several inches by making the frame much thinner. This makes some sense; pushing you back further accomplishes the same thing as moving the seat in front of you further forward. But if I'm complaining about flattened seat cushions on UA, what might the LH be like, if you consider that it's pre-flattened? :eek:

I'm very tempted to try the LH A380 in one direction this July (SFO-CDG, which would obviously be by way of FRA), but the alternative... 777 2/5/2 configuration, with 21H&J available!!! Tough one, that. ;)

ORDnHKG is correct; the above never happened. MRTC debuted in early 2000 and was complete in mid-2001. Bookings fell because of the tragic events on September 11, 2001, not because of any attempt by AA to charge more for tickets.

Incremental bookings were indeed the goal.

In fact, AA enjoyed a yield premium to UA for nearly the entire tenure of MRTC. Problem was, that yield premium wasn't enough to earn profits in late 2002 and early 2003, when bookings were far too soft for all airlines, and AA began adding back seats to the fleet in 2003 on 757s and AB6s which primarily served leisure routes. Over the next couple of years, MRTC was almost completely eliminated on all AA planes.

What you describle above is what would have happened if AA had tried to charge everyone more, but it never actually happened. No airline's execs are so stupid as to charge more for every ticket (as it would cause AA's fares to fall of the first few pages of search results). Not even AA's execs.

AA's execs never attempted to charge more than the competition because of MRTC. Articles may have quoted Arpey or other execs as saying that MRTC had to go because AA could bring in more money from the added seats than from the incremental revenue. But charging higher fares and falling off the front page of fare searches? Never happened.

When AA eliminated MRTC, the execs said that AA could expect incremental revenue of $150 million a year from the re-installed seats.

I expect DL's move to finally force AA to copy E+ (which it probably should have done in 2000 instead of MRTC) unless the merger with CO causes UA to abandon E+.

Of course, AA could always give MRTC another go - B6 essentially offers MRTC to the entire cabin of its A320s along with even more extra legroom for sale (EML) in the front of the cabin plus the exit row. B6 has been eating AA's lunch in BOS and other markets, so the absence of coach seats for sale doesn't appear to be hurting B6.

I thought that modern designed seats recline into the passenger's legroom not into his back neighbor space. Frankly to me UA E+ was never much an advantage over E- because of the same recline. Fortunately so far I managed to mostly fly in the front where recline is better. But I must admit that in domestic F I always choose bulkheads so nobody reclines into my space.

LH has the flattened seats now within Europe where they used it to push the seat pitch below 30". They found a new gauge though claiming that legroom gets more despite the tiny pitch. So now they are very, very close to the cheapest LCCs.

The disease has not entered the A380 yet though, so you should be fine. I hate L now and try not to fly them but I did try the QF and the SQ 380s and was very, very impressed. Only plane better than the 777 IMO.