I would strongly suggest that the powers that be in the Sandcastle listen long and hard to their most loyal customers before entertaining a move to reduce F seating on the 321, IF the 321 is going to remain the primary aircraft for transcons. As another poster said, those of us who do lay out tens of thousands of dollars in fares per year, who fly EVERY week, have come to expect the reasonable availability of upgrades, especially on transcon routes. It's great to say you don't want to offer upgrades, but if it is already a perk you do much more damage than good to take an existing benefit away, or diminish it in any substantive way.
That said there is room for interpretation on REASONABLE availability. On a transcon full of frequent travelers, I think that 24 or 26 F seats is more than reasonable. While it is true that we may not pay B or Y fares ALL the time, we do so much more often than less frequent travelers, and the percentage of revenue we do provide the airline is almost twice the percentage of customers we make up (as Bob said, 16-22% of FF's provide over 40% of the revenue).
It already appears the East 320's will go from 16 to 12 F. So be it--I don't think we have a leg to stand on there. But I do think that reducing F in the 321 by 10 will have repercussions way beyond their current thinking. I think there will be a mass exodus of very FF's to other airlines, especially considering that except for free alcohol, the current F service is little better than other airline's coach (PS) product (no offense to the wonderful flight crews, I refer specifically to the product).
If you remove enough incentives from the frequent flier programs, you risk losing your most loyal base. Many (not all) of US' competetitors have grasped this concept and are working hard to take advantage of these newly created vulnerabilities. I have been offered status matches by at least 3 other airlines in the past few months, and one of them WAS United.
As Piney said before, the APPEARANCE is that the Sandcastle is taking and taking from their most loyal customers, and to date they have given NOTHING back...nor do they appear interested in hearing from us to determine what is or is not important to us. Appearance is reality to most people folks, so if this is the message you want to send, so be it, but if not, you need to take another look at the way you're doing things.
And for the record, this is by no means an LCC, despite what they think--they may be reducing costs and amenities but the fares are still attrocious, COMPARED to competition. RATIONAL fares, remember?
To be honest, I have had contact with some marketing folks in Tempe, but hold little hope that they are really interested in what we have to say...I'll keep you posted though.
My best to you all......
