Hello all,

Today I am going to Rio on United in BF. The first leg of my flight is on a 767-300 from Newark to Houston and I will be in a bed seat, the same seat as my Houston to Rio. I assume that many pax in "domestic F" on that flight are not connecting to an international flight. I often take this 4:30pm flight because of 767 instead of a 737. What a treat vs a regular domestic F seat.

I know that all the big US3 have international configured aircraft flying domestic routes. (NOTE: I am NOT taking about any of the NYC/SFO/LAX transcon premium services, where we all know that "F" is a flat bed)

Is there a way to easily search for domestic flights, across DL, AA and UA (maybe Virgin America or JetBlue) for the routes where internationally configured, flat bed seat, aircraft are used?

I can't help but think, when I think about the many flights way over 3 hours, or 4 hours eg: Boston, Miami, DC, Atlanta to LA, SF or Seattle etc, that premium fliers would pay a very good premium for a bed seat on these routes.

I usually only fly UA because of my status, but when UA is able to free-up more and more TATL-757's, that they could expand ps-like service on many domestic US flights beyond EWR, and charge more for them than the other flights that day on a 737, A320 or domestic 757...I assume the all the same for AA and Delta.

So, basically I have 2 questions: is there a simple way to search for such flights, and two, why don't these airlines consider making 3/4+ hour flights far more premium in domestic F?

Lie flat seats on long haul must be a real treat. Never been, never afford it. But I sleep well sitting in my ez-boy at home, so those type seats would be just marvy for a transcon flight! Saw basically the same in business on Philippine's A343, they must be nice!

VC10er wrote:

So, basically I have 2 questions: is there a simple way to search for such flights, and two, why don't these airlines consider making 3/4+ hour flights far more premium in domestic F?

Speaking for UA, I am guessing not since they have both international and domestic configuration widebodies. I start the booking process and then look at the seat maps to see if it's an international or domestic scheduled for that mission, but there could be aircraft substitutions (more likely an international for a domestic).

While I fly paid First (discounted A fares), I expect most of my fellow travelers in the cabin are on upgrades or award tickets so while I am sure they would love a nicer experience, they're not on a fare that would necessarily justify it (though one could argue their aggregate spend offsets that, especially now that status is tied to how much you spend and not how far you have flown).

The difficulty likely comes down to fleet utilization. If the airline charges a premium for the flat seats, what happens if there is a mechanical or weather related swap? You paid X but will receive Y.

It can be cost prohibitive for an airline to have a dedicated subfleet just for certain routes. They need to be able to use the birds as widely as possible.

zrs70 wrote:

The difficulty likely comes down to fleet utilization. If the airline charges a premium for the flat seats, what happens if there is a mechanical or weather related swap? You paid X but will receive Y.

It can be cost prohibitive for an airline to have a dedicated subfleet just for certain routes. They need to be able to use the birds as widely as possible.

Yes, for some airlines/countries your reason is logical, but for airlines like American, Delta and United that have a huge network it does not make as much sens. First of all, in the US (the country that we are talking about in this thread) you have a good number of routes where such a premium product could work so that already makes your sub-fleet quite big (think 15-20 planes minimum) and when you have a network the size of the ones at AA, DL and UA you have many more routes that you can use your sub-fleet in case of slack in the schedule.

VC10er wrote:

Hello all,


Is there a way to easily search for domestic flights, across DL, AA and UA (maybe Virgin America or JetBlue) for the routes where internationally configured, flat bed seat, aircraft are used?


So, basically I have 2 questions: is there a simple way to search for such flights, and two, why don't these airlines consider making 3/4+ hour flights far more premium in domestic F?

Why not? Because not enough flyers will pay enough of a premium to offset the lower seating density. Capitalism says that resources will follow market demand.


Search on FlyerTalk, Delta forum, for 'widebody, domestic'. Iirc it points to an ITA Matrix trick to look for the widebody/lie flat config.

These domestic wb flights serve the purpose of repositioning a/c between hubs. As such, they are not part of UA's broader strategy in the domestic market, but rather to move the a/c from one international hub to another where the next international assignment is waiting. The in between flights between, say, ORD-IAH, SFO-LAX or IAH-EWR don't have enough of a premium demand to justify a dometic BusinessFirst service.

The only dedicated lie flat/bed service intra US on a dedicated basis is the NYC-LAX and NYC-SFO service (as you mentioned). Everything else that appears (utilizing a widebody) is usually a positioning flight (or sometimes) a training flight run to familiarize crew.

I don't think there is a way to search the various flight search engines for "F" class and get a true F seat. If you search MIA-LAX for F class, you're going to pull results from AA which feature a 737-800 with a domestic F product, a 767-300 which has a two-class J/Y product but where the J is sold as F within the USA, and possibly a 777-200 where you might have a true three class configuration with true "F" class.

Lets say I have an airline with a massive network in the continental US and a large international network with based out of BOS or New-York, I could send my premium fleet to LA, San-Fran, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, San Diego, Miami, Phily, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Orlando(?), Portland(?) and Denver as well as use them in my international network if I have slack in the fleet at any one time. All in all, if you serve all these cities with a Premmium offering and a decent schedule your sub-fleet is not that small anymore...

Jet Blue has introduced a flatbed product called Mint. It looks like a very competitive product especially the "suite" seat. I've booked a flight BOS-SFO on this service next month.

http://www.jetblue.com/flying-on-jetblue/mint/

It is available only on a handful of flights, mostly transcon, unfortunately.

VC10er wrote:

I can't help but think, when I think about the many flights way over 3 hours, or 4 hours eg: Boston, Miami, DC, Atlanta to LA, SF or Seattle etc, that premium fliers would pay a very good premium for a bed seat on these routes.

Increasingly, the airlines are offering lie-flat service on the longest domestic transcon routes. In order to make it worth it, there must be enough high-yield and business traffic on that route to merit the product, as it is more expensive per square area of cabin to offer.

A special, dedicated fleet is used for these and that comes at the cost of flexibility. I would argue that there is little value to a lie-flat seat if I'm flying SFO-IAH. It's a 3.5 hour flight and I have no need of a lie-flat product. So UA's solution is to keep most of its domestic narrowbody fleet with standard domestic F fleets and keep a dedicated sub-fleet for those transcon flights where there is a market. It means that some longer segments don't get a lie-flat option, true. But with no competition for those products, UA has little incentive to add it.

Stitch wrote:

While I fly paid First (discounted A fares), I expect most of my fellow travelers in the cabin are on upgrades or award tickets so while I am sure they would love a nicer experience, they're not on a fare that would necessarily justify it (though one could argue their aggregate spend offsets that, especially now that status is tied to how much you spend and not how far you have flown).

Assuming your F class travel is mainly on business, how common is it for US employers to permit F class in their travel expense policies?

Viscount724 wrote:

Stitch wrote:

While I fly paid First (discounted A fares), I expect most of my fellow travelers in the cabin are on upgrades or award tickets so while I am sure they would love a nicer experience, they're not on a fare that would necessarily justify it (though one could argue their aggregate spend offsets that, especially now that status is tied to how much you spend and not how far you have flown).

Assuming your F class travel is mainly on business, how common is it for US employers to permit F class in their travel expense policies?

Even if Stitch flies mostly for business who says that he is not paying himself for the ticket or paying the difference between the Companies budget and the F seat?

Viscount724 wrote:

Assuming your F class travel is mainly on business, how common is it for US employers to permit F class in their travel expense policies?

That is an opened question, it really depends, when I travel for work it's in first domestic and business international, most of my friends who travel have the same rules, though for some it's if the flight is over x hours they get the higher cabin, then others are stuck in Y no matter what, it really does depend on who you work for.

To the original question, I was a VX person for a long time, their first beats just about anything that isn't on a transcon route, which for me being based in Vegas means we got the big seat up front, not the lie flat, so the VX cradled seat was nice to be able to catch a nap, moving to my last employer VX didn't serve that route, so it was DL, now I am a mix of DL and B6 depending on where I am heading, on international I get to pick as long as the price is competitive. With Mint being rolled out to more stations I am a happy person.

DocLightning wrote:

VC10er wrote:

I can't help but think, when I think about the many flights way over 3 hours, or 4 hours eg: Boston, Miami, DC, Atlanta to LA, SF or Seattle etc, that premium fliers would pay a very good premium for a bed seat on these routes.

Increasingly, the airlines are offering lie-flat service on the longest domestic transcon routes. In order to make it worth it, there must be enough high-yield and business traffic on that route to merit the product, as it is more expensive per square area of cabin to offer.

A special, dedicated fleet is used for these and that comes at the cost of flexibility. I would argue that there is little value to a lie-flat seat if I'm flying SFO-IAH. It's a 3.5 hour flight and I have no need of a lie-flat product. So UA's solution is to keep most of its domestic narrowbody fleet with standard domestic F fleets and keep a dedicated sub-fleet for those transcon flights where there is a market. It means that some longer segments don't get a lie-flat option, true. But with no competition for those products, UA has little incentive to add it.

To build on this -- a lot of biz travelers aren't even going to make use of his amenity unless it's a red-eye. More and more, travel time is time on the clock. It's no longer acceptable to burn a half day snoozing at 35,000 ft if you can be prepping for a presentation, working on a paper, or answering emails.

All I meant was, that the 4:30pm EWR to IAH is almost always a 767-300. I assume this is for premium pax flying from EWR to South America. Although, because I know this AC is often an international 767, and if I only need to go to Houston on business, I will take this flight and buy F. Do I "need" a flat bed? No. But, it's nice to be able to nap, or work or relax with a movie. I have my own company so, I no longer need to follow Corp travel rules. I will then charge my clients the Y fare and eat the difference. It then got me to wonder how often DL, AA and UA do this, and if there was an easier way to search it other than check the equipment on each flight I need to book. THEN, when I thought about how many TATL 757's might be freed up due to new 787's and moving 767's into old 757-TATL routes, it "seemed" that (perhaps) a morning and red-eye route from other east coast cities to the west coast or Denver, "could" command a premium ala: ps.

Form a DL perspective, a casual search yielded:

1x JFK-ATL (Int'l 763)
1x ATL-JFK (Int'l 763)
2x JFK-SEA (Int'l 752)
2x SEA-JFK (Int'l 752)
1x ATL-LAX (Int'l 763)
1x LAX-ATL (Int'l 763)
1x ATL-SEA (Int'l 763)
1x SEA-ATL (Int'l 763)

Good rule of thumb is you're more likely to find widebody/Int'l config domestics on Hub-Hub positioning type flights. Also not unheard of to have a 'quick-turn' utilization flight for a widebody from the hub (i.e. ATL-Florida on DL or MIA-Florida on AA).

Last December I flew MIA to SFO on an AA 763 that was equipped with lie flat beds. The flight was not too crowded so I was graded to first and slept like a baby the whole way.