I'm starting to wonder if UAL should start thinking about adding seats back to their domestic narrowbody airplanes at the expense of significantly reducing the number of first class or economy plus seats. I'm starting to wonder if the cost of providing premium seating to its domestic narrowbody customer is adding costs to the airline that domestic fares simply barely sustain, or won't sustain in the future.
With 80% average load factors the new norm, I'm wondering if we're leaving too much money on the table by taking seats out of airplanes that probably would have had butts in them had we left them in. I think that when average load factors were much lower, it probably made sense to add economy plus as the average seat removed probably had nobody sitting in it, but now I suspect that is no longer the case. Or maybe we should remove first class entirely from our domestic narrowbodies and just use a reduced number of economy plus seats as our "premium" domestic seat for the typical short haul type flight. I'd love to see how much it is really costing us (an opportunity cost if you will) by not having these extra coach seats on our airplanes, and how much of a "premium" we're really getting for guys/gals flying first class/economy plus in our typical domestic, narrowbody market.
With 80% average load factors the new norm, I'm wondering if we're leaving too much money on the table by taking seats out of airplanes that probably would have had butts in them had we left them in. I think that when average load factors were much lower, it probably made sense to add economy plus as the average seat removed probably had nobody sitting in it, but now I suspect that is no longer the case. Or maybe we should remove first class entirely from our domestic narrowbodies and just use a reduced number of economy plus seats as our "premium" domestic seat for the typical short haul type flight. I'd love to see how much it is really costing us (an opportunity cost if you will) by not having these extra coach seats on our airplanes, and how much of a "premium" we're really getting for guys/gals flying first class/economy plus in our typical domestic, narrowbody market.