A translucent wall. A closet. A snack bar. A big TV. These aren’t things that we think of as being front and center when it comes to how people choose their airline, but when you add them up as United has done, they have the desired effect. With a little more time in between me and United’s recent media day, I’ve been able to think bigger picture about how United looks at things. And every often, that big picture… is small.
Sure, United did show off some big, new, shiny toys like its Elevated interior on the B787-9. But on the surface, anyone can outfit an airplane with flat beds. It’s the little things that make a big difference, and I found employee after employee very eager to show off those little things everywhere I turned.
An airline’s layout of passenger accommodations — LOPA for short — is like the blueprint for each aircraft. It’s the LOPA that shows where seats are as well as all the monuments that lie inside — galleys, lavs, etc. When it comes to a LOPA, there is only so much you can do. There is a finite amount of space on any given tube, but that doesn’t mean there is no wiggle room at all. And some airlines are better at maximizing their use of space than others.
Perhaps nothing has shown this off more in recent times than the United A321neo LOPA. On this airplane, United fit 20 First Class seats plus 57 Economy Plus and 123 regular Economy seats for a total of 200. Delta has 194 seats while American is at 196, so you would imagine that United’s configuration would be knee-crunching and disliked.
It’s not.
Filled with big screens full of content, wifi (faster Starlink wifi coming soon), and even a snack bar in the back, United says the A321neo has the airline’s highest customer satisfaction scores in the entire fleet. Perhaps this proves the point that while legroom matters, it’s the cumulative impact of every little thing that can make or break someone’s experience. And expertise with a LOPA can help enable those little things.
This LOPA-ninjaing was on full display at United’s media day on nearly all of its announcements.
For example, take the Relax Row which is a repurposed Air New Zealand Skycouch that will turn a set of three coach seats into a larger bed area on five rows of the airlines widebodies. This product does require adding an extra inch of legroom in those rows. That might be an issue except that in that back cabin where the seats will be, there is extra room available. I imagine the idea of wasted space gnawed at United, so it found something to do with it. This means United can take those five inches to put them to work generating revenue.
Or take the new Polaris flat beds on the transcon A321 Coastliner as well as the A321XLR. The 1-1 herringbone configuration seems to be the default way of fitting in beds on the narrowbody, but United knew that there had been concern about the claustrophobic coffin feeling onboard. It’s no wonder why:
The geometry of the airplane requires using a seat like this or forfeiting too much space, and it does look narrow here, doesn’t it?
But what did United do? It realized that if it lowered the walls a little, carved out more shoulder room, and then installed a translucent wall behind the traveler, it would create a much greater feeling of space and comfort with more light. No, it doesn’t make it so you face the window, which explains this look on my face, but it does still feel different than what others have done.
Then there’s the fancy Polaris Studio suite at the front of each cabin on the new B787-9 with the Elevated interior.
As I understand it, there is an issue with access to the crew rest area that makes it more challenging to put a big screen in those seats. But United figured it out. That new screen is a giant at 27 inches.
Contrast this with American which went with a smaller screen, because it was having trouble with certification. It just feels a whole lot different.
It’s not just up front either. When I walked to the back of the B787, one of the original project managers wanted to show off the 13 inch screens back there. This put United at the top of the class with airlines like Emirates and Japan Airlines. In the US, I don’t think anyone is above 12 inches. Is that a dealbreaker? No. But that extra inch is just part of the overall effort by United to keep improving the product throughout the airplane.
We can talk about the introduction of a closet and the elimination of overhead bins on the new CRJ450, or we can go back in time to the CRJ550 which did something similar. It’s not easy to be creative on a small, regional fleet. This is definitely creative.
To me, these small things were what United really had on display at media day. You can put the headlines in a press release, but when you step onboard and feel the difference, that’s where it will really shine. United seems to get that better than anyone these days.
