United’s New 787-9 Configuration Shows That The Future of Travel is More and More Premium
American travelers yearn for luxury — or maybe, just livable conditions — and airlines like Delta and United are giving it to them. The two airlines now count over 60% of their revenue from premium seats. And if United’s new widebody configuration is any indication, perhaps economy might soon be a relic on long-haul.
- The airline’s new 787-9, which will fly on high-value routes from San Francisco to London-Heathrow and Singapore, will be half Polaris Business Class — 64 seats in total.
- Behind 17 rows of Polaris, an additional 35 Premium Plus tickets and Economy Plus tickets will take up another third of the plane — leaving just 84 economy tickets.
Who’s paying for this? United’s Polaris seats take up “~3x the space of economy, but sell for ~8x the price,” according to Better Tomorrow Ventures’ Sheel Mohnot. But who’s paying for tickets on these routes? Well, at least in 2019, it was largely big-dollar clients like Apple, who were said to spend an average of “50 business class seats daily” just to get employees to and from Shanghai. And as business travel and luxury personal travel normalizes, it only stands to reason that there will be more competition for these limited international seats.