United Airlines is finding itself in an interesting situation. While premium airline demand is all the rage these days, the Chicago-based carrier has reportedly had hundreds of business class seats in storage for years, but no longer has a use for them. What exactly is going on here?
Put them in lounges as relaxation areas!
I share the same idea of flying them on hub-to-hub routes like ORD-LAX, EWR-DEN, IAH-SFO etc, especially since these markets have redeyes.
I'm assuming they won't work on the older 757s, even as a temporary upgrade to those 2-2 cabins.
I'll take one
Eventually UA will realize that they made a mistake purchasing inferior Airbuses and roll out the superior American-made product.
Eh, truthfully for flat bed seats the slightly wider and taller Airbus makes a really good case for itself.
Airbus has no case to make. It manufactures nothing but flaming dumpsters filled with dog waste.
One other possibility is to put the flat beds in some of the 737-700s. There are rumors they were planning on turning those planes into heavy premium aircraft for SNA/EYW/EGE with 24 standard first class seats and a total of just around 110, so maybe there's a chance for some of these seats to be put to use in those.
However, thruthfully, I've heard rumors that executives were dissapointed with how tight the seats turned out on the 737 and how tight the aisles were as well, and I think these seats are now half a generation behind, thanks to likely a slightly smaller screen size, no wireless charging, possibly USB A instead of C, etc. So unfortunately they may have no choice but to recycle them. I'm sure Boeing would pay back some of the expense, United has a lot of sway with them. I would be thrilled if they maybe wanted to auction off a few modules of seats...
Surely with Boeing self-certifying planes again, the Max10 will be delivered to UA (and everyone else) on Thursday?
I guess those seats would at least work in any 737 MAX, even the smaller versions.
So they could just add 1-2 rows of these on every plane and sell them as "First Plus" (or be revolutionary and rename the current First to Business, so those flatbeds will then be First... but I guess that would be too much to ask from marketing...).
Adding only those very few seats on each plane would allow to equip a large fleet using those seats from storage, making this product widely available even for connecting flights.
What's not clear is why United is even taking the MAX 10s at all instead of converting them all to more -8s or -9s when it became clear that Boeing wasn't going to get them certified and delivered within an acceptable timeframe. It seems like they're trying to force added complexity of an aircraft that is no longer really needed into the fleet plan because of sunk costs.
The MAX 10 has been made redundant in United's fleet plan even with its revised role. The A321neo (non-XLR) in the standard domestic configuration seats 200 (as opposed to the 189-seat configuration planned for the MAX 10, which is only 10 additional economy seats and zero additional first class seats from the MAX 9), and is already on the property taking over high-capacity domestic routes like ORD-SFO from the 757-300. Yes, the neo has GTF engine issues, but United already has plenty of experience mitigating the issues of the NEOs and smaller Max's opposed to whatever unknown teething problems the MAX 10 may bring. The NEO is also capable of handling short-field runways like LGA and DCA, unlike the MAX 9 and 10.
My understanding is the operating economics of the 10Max blows the A321 out of the water. But I can’t confirm where I read that. And despite having a similar seating count as the A321, United still planned to put flatbeds in those Maxs, so clearly there is some real value for United to operate these frames in the high premium configuration. It was only the indefinite delay with certification that caused the switch to Airbus’
It's also likely that UA is ready to retire old 737-8s, A319s, A320s, and 757s, and the 737-10 offers an easy to grow capacity, become more efficient, and use a model that aligns with the 737-9max. Remember, UA because of CO never ordered the 8 max, they only have the 9 max. With the desire to have the largest most efficient planes, the 10 makes sense.
Flat beds to Greenland incoming?
Honestly, I don't think they need premium catering, but anything over 4 hours is a candidate for a premium configuration.
Would also be really nice to copy some of B6's work flying from the Northeast to premium leisure destinations in the Caribbean (like Aruba and St. Lucia).
Or something like EWR-SNA, LAX-LIH, IAH-LIM where United could get a competitive advantage. Carribbean isn't high yielding for Premium traffic but tons of premium leisure demand.
How about using lie flat equipped 737 max planes to expand their premium transcon network with transcon routes that sometimes use lie flat equipped planes like LAX-IAD, BOS-LAX and SFO, as well as Hawaii flights to/from CA like Continental did for all Hawaii flights; they even had BusinessFirst service on Hawaii flights using 737’s. And they could use such planes on some longer Central America flights like Copa does with their Max 9s. It’s a good way to keep the lie flats intended for these plane from going to waste.
About 1000 lie-flat seats? Identify your most important passengers, highest loyalty level, and start a lottery where they have a chance to win one of these seats.
"Win your private lie-flat business class seat with United". Invitation only.
Why wouldn't these seats fit in A321Neo ? The cabin is wider in A321Neo compared to 737 so they should have been able to work with the manufacturer. Of course the isle would be a few inches wider and they lose a bit of space.
Collins Aurora already got certified in A321neo (UA,AA,UA). I understand that there are some changes in the same seat for different plane but considering A321 is wider, it shouldn't have been too difficult and/or costly. Definitely cheaper than throwing away tens of millions $ worth of seats.
The seat tracks are different
The aircraft walls are curved differently
It will take an expensive changes to be able to make it A321 worthy and possibly that might still not be certifiable at the end, not worth the effort.
Iceland? Hawaii?
I wonder how many marketing executives are reading OMAAT.
I have the perfect solution. Ticks all the boxes. Why hasn't Kirby thought of it.
For all the wives who have been left behind for all these years the husbands have been flying non stop.
The one final gift of love to their deceased husbands. One final flight on lay flat bed. The ultimate flying coffin. No catering requiredl
I wonder how many marketing executives are reading OMAAT.
I have the perfect solution. Ticks all the boxes. Why hasn't Kirby thought of it.
For all the wives who have been left behind for all these years the husbands have been flying non stop.
The one final gift of love to their deceased husbands. One final flight on lay flat bed. The ultimate flying coffin. No catering requiredl