United Airlines is marketing its first transatlantic flight without a business class cabin, treating a domestic recliner seat as premium economy rather than business class onboard the 737 MAX. This decision has important implications for travelers.
United Airlines Markets 737 MAX “First Class” Recliner Seats As “Premium Economy” On New Flight To Azores
First noted by Zach Griff, United is now selling premium cabin seats on its new flight from Newark (EWR) to Ponta Delgada (PDL) in the Azores. flight will be operated by a Boeing 737-8 MAX, featuring 16 domestic first class recliners, 54 Economy Plus seats (up to five extra inches of legroom), and 96 standard economy class seats. At 2,576 miles, the flight between Newark and Ponta Delgada is similar in length to a transcontinental flight.
When United announced this new transatlantic 737 service last year, it initially sold seats in the forward cabin as Polaris Business Class. Without warning, though, all premium cabin space disappeared. Now it is back, but rather than marketing the cabin as Polaris, it is branded as PremiumPlus, the name for United’s premium economy product.
There’s both pros and cons to that new designation. The good news:
- Cheaper fares
- Less PlusPoints to upgrade (20 points form any fare versus 40-80 points to upgrade to business class depending upon purchase fare class)
But there’s bad news as well:
- No lounge access (not just Polaris lounge access, but even United Club access)
- Cannot book via Star Alliance partners (there is not an alliance-wide premium economy award fare class and thus far, partners cannot book premium economy seats on United metal)
- Reduced amenities onboard (limited bedding, smaller meal, no amenity kit)
It would not surprise me to see United carve out an exception on this route for United Club access, but nothing has been announced at this point.
The move mimics what Delta does on the Boeing 757-200s with domestic recliner seats it operates on select transatlantic flights to Iceland and Ireland.
One Seat: Three Designations
This move is sure to lead to questions why United still calls this identical product “first class” on domestic flights but premium economy class on transatlantic flights and business class on flights to Canada, the Caribbean, and Latin America.
The simple answer is that because each market is different. Passengers traveling from Houston to Newark do not expect a lie-flat seat in the forward cabin but in the USA, for better or for worse, the domestic front-cabin product is generally called “first class” even though in almost all cases it is inferior to “business class” on longhaul flights.
This “first class” designation is not used on international flights, because U.S. carriers have always distinguished domestic first class from international first class.
But the use of “PremiumPlus” for this seat begs the question, why doesn’t Untied just call this seat “PremiumPlus” throughout its fleet?
First, because it likely would not be able to charge as much on domestic flights. Second, because United recognizes that it only has a limited number of seats in the forward cabin and prefers to reserve those for connecting longhaul business class passengers or others who pay outright. If all recliner seats were re-branded premium economy, a scenario might result in which most cabins were filled by connecting passengers who chose premium economy class on their longhaul flight.
CONCLUSION
United is selling its domestic first recliner seat as premium economy for the first time. Consider Ponta Delgada an experiment in marketing, but no matter the success, I would not expect the “first class” product to be dropped from domestic flights anytime soon.
I think this is the right move because to market this as “Polaris” greatly diminishes the brand and will inevitably lead to angry customers arriving to find a product far inferior to what they anticipated. These seats are quite similar to premium economy seats offered on wide bodies so the designation makes sense.
Well to be fair, United currently markets their international Business Class as “Polaris” and it inevitably leads to customers arriving to find a product far inferior to what they anticipated.
Save for the lounges, more premium heavy aircraft (offering consistency with respect to the actual seat itself), the current Polaris offering is essentially a “Big Front Seat” product over Premium Plus. The amenities and meals are the same quality/variety/portion as Premium Plus and to that extent so is the service. Unless you plan on making the Polaris lounge the highlight of your trip (which unless I have a long layover or there is not an AMEX Centurion Lounge at the UA hub airport I am connecting through) AA or DL seem to be able to offset the loss with better meals in-flight, standard lounge access, and other seat advantages (AA newer seat installations are larger than Polaris pods and newer DL deliveries feature doors).
Even before CoVid started, the cuts were evident; tweaking a service item here or there, such as doing away with the Bloody Mary/Mimosa cart, wasn’t a huge loss. But continuously stripping down what is currently being offered, to the point where it is a standard below even the last iteration of BusinessFirst that existed post merger, shows that UA is making little to no effort to improve the service.
I think this is a great move. You should not be using 40 or 80 PlusPoints for a 737MAX recliner seat. And if lounge access is so important to you, fly Polaris through Frankfurt.
Actually, now that I think about this, why not just brand it as United Business the same way you brand flights to Mexico, Costa Rica, etc?
Right, that was my first thought. Brand it as business, not Polaris.
Not sure if this applies to Star Alliance, but I believe Skyteam requires any product being marketed as business class to have a lie flat seat. It’s possible Star Alliance has the same requirement and United had to downgrade the branding as a result.
Do you have any citation for that? That’s an interesting concept and would assume that if in effect, it applies only to longhaul.
I’ve spent more than an hour trying to find it lol. I’m positive I read it either from Ben or Cranky.
Tarom is going to be disappointed to hear this.
In looking into your comment, I discovered that DL markets their narrow-body front cabin as “first” even on international destinations such MEX/SJO/BZE/etc.
But PE to SNN and KEF.
AA has also done the same for flights to Ireland.
This seems like the Trans Atlantic standard. Recliners are PE when crossing the Atlantic
There is a North American airline that markets their domestic “J” product as PE, WestJet. Same product as ACs domestic J
Mail issue with this flight is the connections are in Y. The connections to PDL should be in F
I wonder how much loss revenue now though from people who go to Expedia or google flights and search for a business class seat but don’t see United.
Little to no loss. Ponta Delgada is literally an all economy/ friends and relative visiting market. It is not a premium market at all, and has very little paid business class demand. The main people going there are Azoreans from the San Francisco Bay area and Azoreans from the Southeast New England area. They primarily fly Azores Airlines nonstop from either Boston, Providence, or Oakland. All that airline offers is economy/ premium economy these days. So United is right in line with the competition on this one.
Somebody else said that others will just fly through Frankfurt to get a lie flat flight. Wrong. lufthansa does not fly to the Azores. Only Azores Airlines and maybe RyanAir and maybe Air Portugal.
This product is right for this non-premium-leisure market.
Does SATA still have the A310 in service?
No- SATA/ Air Azores retired the A310 and mostly uses a321 from east coast. I’m not sure if they’re still flying to Oakland. I think they used a leases A330 or a340 for Oakland but not 100% sure
TAP has lots of flights to the Azores, not just PDL. And it obviously makes more sense to connect via LIS if you’re flying from the other side of the pond (although it would still involve a fair bit of backtracking).
Could Plat and 1K get comp upgraded?
Unfortunately, not. But 20PP to upgrade is a lot better than 40!
Delta does this already on their domestically configured 757s that cross the Atlantic.
Fantastic compromise. Will be interesting to see if AA follows on some of its narrow body Brazil flights.
MAO and BSB have been cut, so it’s not an issue right now…
BSB did often price lower than GRU/GIG as it should have because it had an inferior product, but I found you could often get the same fare by taking the GRU flight and connecting to BSB, so if you didn’t mind either flying to BSB and booking a cheap domestic flight to wherever you wanted to go, you could take the 777 down (in J or F with an SWU) for a fairly reasonable price.
Nice beta, thanks Jerry.
I hope no one is actually spending $2500 for premium economy or $1800 for economy .
but it is likely that UA will soon be charging 180k miles for the flights
I spoke too soon – it is 98k miles each way – 196k miles r/t
– just few short years ago 196k miles could get you true F class almost anywhere and back
Does a flight to the Azores really qualify as “transatlantic”? There’s a lot of the Atlantic that you aren’t crossing there.
Similarly, I guess I’ve never considered flights between US and Iceland to be transatlantic or mainland US and Hawaii to be transpacific.
Why not just call it “First Class” like all domestic flights?
Less confusion and it is on a domestic plane not a true international plane
Most people know First Class is inferior to Polaris by now
When you book Premium Economy at Lufthansa you can access their business class lounges for USD 30 in Germany and USD 50 in the USA. This seems like a decent strategy for those passengers that care about lounge access…
Is this going to be a remarkable experience or not? xD
If it flies like my new longboard that I purchased recently from BoardsOnTop, I would love to.
Why could you not book via a Star Alliance partner? LH.com lets you buy UA flights in Prem Economy today, so why not with that flight?
That’s not because they are Star Alliance partners, it’s because they are partners in the transatlantic JV. You can’t book it if you have miles with Aegean, Turkish, Asiana etc.
Booking a premium economy fare on United is a fare which is eligible for an automatic upgrade to First on the domestic legs for Platinum and above MileagePlus members. Those upgrades can be requested immediately after booking *if upgrade space is available*. I suppose this allows selling First space directly, and only upgrading closer to the flight if there is space available, which is consistent with not wanting to fill First with Premium Economy. But the other issue with rebranding domestic First as Premium Economy would be if that if it would change CPU upgrades to Plus Points. That would be a bit of a downgrade for Silver and Gold members who couldn’t get an upgrade since they don’t get Plus Points
Why couldn’t UA simply decide that flights under 5 hours are elegible for CPUs to PE if domestic F was rebranded as PE? Anything longer PP must be used
Or give all elites PPs if PPs would be required for all upgrades? Maybe Silvers only receive 40, golds 120, Plats 360, 1Ks 1080.