PanHam

Hey, folks,

I did a search, but, could find nothing, which, could of course be result of the search tool, or my ineptitude, but, I still wanted to know. (I even attempted a Google search, but came up empty).

What's the history of UA's old F product - the "old" lie-flat F suite? When did it premier? When did it launch in the timeline of the trend of airlines featuring lie-flat seats? (I remember BA seemed to be the first to roll out lie-flats from an ad in the newspaper). How was it first received by the traveling public? And, what international F did it replace?

Similarly, with the old C - that looks really old - when did that premier? I imagine they upgraded to the old F while still keeping the old C. What did the "Old" C replace? Connoisseur class? How did it compare with other products available at the time?

If any of you UA vets have info, I'm definitely interested, just for posterity.

Thanks!

BenjaminNYC

I took UA F IAD-FRA in 2000, and the Suites were just being rolled out. My flight didn't have it, nor the new C of the time. So I think the current product rolled out around 1999-2000.

BA was the first to have true lie flat in BUSINESS Class, well before UA had true lie flat in F. UA was then, like it is now, a laggard, not a leader.

FlyinHawaiian

I have seen photos of some of the older seats on airliners.net.

This looks like the old F on the 744:

http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviatio.../0/0031000.jpg
http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviatio.../9/0030999.jpg

And here's the 777:

http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviatio.../3/0045359.jpg

Just search for photos of "Cabin Views" on United Airlines.

ORDinary guy

I worked at the advertising agency handling United from 1990-92. At that time they were rolling out a revamp of C and F classes and supporting them with advertising.

Their director of marketing told us to come up with a brand name for C-class, and he wanted some word that started with a C. We took the thesaurus and came up with a list of 25 or 30 possible C-words. Connoisseur Class won out. Incidentally, Gene Hackman had a devil of a time pronouncing "Connoisseur." We had to do many takes.

This was the generation of seats prior to the current C seats and F suites. Those F seats are still in the pre-renovation 767s, while I believe the C seats have had a once over in between. United had just won all the Pan Am routes and was touted its newly enlarged international scope. At the same time they were branding Transcon flights (NY-LAX/SFO) as "an international quality flight that doesn't leave the country."

BenjaminNYC

The F seats in the current old 767 were never put in the 777/747. I think the 777/747 went from the seats pictured by FlyinHawaiian above to the Suites.

PanHam

Wow - I had no idea that UA's 777 were so old.

And, ORDinary Guy: Cool story. Thanks for sharing.

UCBeau

Sheesh, I guessed the mid-80's for the current stuff. Oops.

tealeaf99

I think UA took deliveries of the first 777s in 1995. I remember trying to route myself on flights that had the 777. And those 777 F seats ... I did not find them comfy at all to sleep in.

UCBeau

Did UA use the intl 777's on domestic routes right after they received them? circa 1995/1996? I seem to recall flying one on LAX-ORD and the F seats being interesting.

Granted, my only basis for comparison was DL and AY's C products, to that point.

mauiUAflyer

IIRC, the F seats in the 747 in the ~1993 timeframe were a variation of the lazy-boy, with several electric motors to move them hither and yon. More of a lighter-colored material, and not the brown like in the 7676's. Got to fly them HNL-SFO. Much nicer than the very upright DC-10 F seats!

The 767's that I took in C in the early 1990's had the "old" C seats you see now in the last few planes.

IIRC, the 777's had an electric lazy-boy type seat in the late 90's. Not sure when the current coffins came into being.

At some point in the mid-90's, the 57's had black leather seats, with goose-neck reading lamp (and back massage??). Not sure when that went away; maybe others can chime in.

PanHam

Ouch - the old C seats have been around since 1990? Wow.

ual1960

No one has this correct:

When UA launched Int'l (Tokyo from Seattle & Portland), then bought the Pan Am routes (over a few years), C-class were these gaudy red seats much like current domestic F. They had no leg rests and lasted until the early 1990s, where the post by the ex-Burnett guy above is spot on.

Connoisseur Class introduced seats with leg rests that went out a bit and had fairly limited recline. These were kind of a mauve/grey. The 777 launched with variations on these in 1995. The current C-class seats appeared first in 1999. They were a big improvement (even against the competition then, airlines like Thai still had no leg rests at all) right down to the map option on IFE.

BA launched beds in late 2000 and UA responded by taking a few rows out of C on all planes and changing the recline so that they went back much further, as they do now.

[In 2001 UA was still competitive, given the fairly large amount of space of the enlarged C pitch.]

But then the competition passed them by. The shell/angled seats became common (and are generally better than the UA product) and worse for UA customers, the fully manual seats just got long on the tooth, when many competitors let you adjust everything with the touch of a button.

Obviously IFE and in-seat power were real black marks. You'd bring your emPower aboard only to find the socket busted anyway.

I will save F class for another day, but for the 1990s and until last year on the 767 it was broadly similar to the soon-to-be-gone C, except it had more power adjustments. I used to get upgraded from C to the pre-suite F on the 777 and it was a minor improvement you would never pay for.

Food as we all know has declined quite a bit. Who remembers the boxes of Godiva chocolates passed around after dessert and then left out?

gengar

I still have several of the Connoisseur Class menus lying around.

It's funny to think of all the times I flew TPACs upstairs on a 747SP and not even having footrests, and now we complain about not having lie-flats in biz. These are probably the seats ual1960 mentioned above.

I remember getting on a 744 for the first time and thinking that the legrests with the extending grey bar footrests (which always made a loud mechanical unwinding sound) were so cool. Anyone have pics of those? Even "old C" was (is?) a HUGE improvement over those....

UA_Flyer

Actually, they were never installed in the 777, but they were installed in the 744.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Unite...422/0046546/L/

I flew them in 1997/1998 after the then "new" C and F were rolling out, and I was wondering what a crappy F seats they were. There were little differentiation between F and C seats. Then the F suites started to arrive in 2000 after or during BA started introducing lie-flat seats.

I flew a ton of transpac between 1995 and 2000 (over 700K BIS) and I noted UA did not really do a good job rolling out the C seats either (compare to the current C rollout) over ten years ago. I remembered C seats were installed without individual monitors in the 744. A couple of 744OAs had the old F and Connoisseur C seats for a couple more years longer and switched to 744OB in early this century. New 777s were brought into the fleet that had different F seats than the 744 and 763. Some of the 777s also had missing individual IFE in C and F seats, and went back for IFE installations after a few months. Of couse, you had the old 762 floating around for a few more years after that. A lot of inconsistency in product offerings at the time.

Although the old F (pre-97 and pre-suite era) were less sophiscated, they were actually quite comfortable. In those days, 7-course meals were served with caviar(and all the trimmings), made-to-order salad, big bowl of soup, appertizer, rack of lamb, and chateaubriand cut in front of you.....etc...etc. There were great flying experience pre-FlyerTalk days. ^

boifromtroy

Somehow I remember flying an Old "C" 767-200 plane when they first launched P.S. service...so that transition must have taken forever!