Competition is certainly heating up on the JFK to LAX route. Starting next year American will be taking delivery of their Airbus 321 aircraft, which will operate their Flagship Service routes between New York and Los Angeles/San Francisco. These planes will feature fully flat beds in business and first class, and it looks like an…
Continue reading: Delta adding some widebodies to their NYC-LAX route in 2013
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I think that the first new p.s. plane will be reconfigured this month, the plane suspected to be the first in the new config has been out of service for two weeks.
For DL flyers, upgrades on the premium transcon JFK-LAX/SFO are tough - first they don't clear upgrades in advance and second, there are only 16 J seats. Even as a diamond, upgrades are hard to come by. With the 767-300ERs, upgrades will hopefully come a bit easier, and it also has a larger economy comfort section, which is much appreciated. However, Delta will have many economy seats to sell and I wonder how the numbers will work. Anyway, I appreciate the "upgrade" from 75E to 767-300ERs.
I've only been upgraded LAX-JFK as GM on a Saturday night redeye. I should be DL Platinum when they upgauge most flights, so I'm looking forward to seeing how upgrades will be affected, particularly 206 and 1162 from LAX and 2363 from JFK.
Even in Y, having a 2-3-2 EC seat will be better than 3-3. Terrific change by DL.
Still can't believe UA is willing to give up F on this route despite AA. Also will be interesting how the flat beds in C will affect VX premium traffic. VX F and AA and UA C in their old configs seat wise were pretty even. I think VX won some fans for their top notch service and soft product, but now with the new seats I wonder how long that goodwill with the big $$$ customers will last.
Hey Ben, what is the current UA p.s. C/J/F seat count as compared to the future all-J/C configuration? Will there be more premium seats overall? I know that they are installing both E and E+ together on the new planes, where they only had E+ on p.s. before, right?
@ theblakefish -- The old configuration had 38 business/first class seats and the new configuration will have 26 business class seats, so it's a pretty drastic reduction in premium capacity.
Just an FYI on the DL 75E's. Every single DL aircraft flying the JFK-LAX/SFO/SEA routes will feature flat bed seating, some widebody flying, and feature lay-flat J seats. As confirmed with a few DL folks, DL will be outfitting the 75Es with 16J (Layflat) 44 EC seats and 108 Y seats.
Also available from Y! business news (sorry for the lengthy link, don't remember html):
Also, with the changes to the JFK-LAX schedule for Delta, it's only a net gain of 10 economy class seats per day (they're dropping a frequency from 8 to 7 flights/day). Big gain is the Business Class seats increase (about 19%).