My Cicy

Business travel U.S. airlines

BY DOUGLAS McARTHUR SOMETHING Canadian business travellers have come to take for granted - a business class cabin on key domestic air routes - is only now being introduced in the United States.

Delta Air Lines started the trend late last year by putting planes on its New York to Los Angeles routes that were configured to offer business class in addition to first and coach (economy) class. This month, United entered the competition by introducing three classes on about 100 weekly flights linking six airports - Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Newark and New York JFK. For both airlines, the flights are continuations of international services, using the same planes that fly to and from foreign destinations.

Now American Airlines is taking the move a step further by redesigning 10 DC-10s strictly to offer three-class service on a domestic route. The planes will start linking New York and Los Angeles on Feb 4.

Up to this point, most flights within the United States offered only two classes: first and coach. And in most cases, the domestic first class was roughly equivalent to the business class that most carriers offer internationally and that Canadian carriers offer within Canada. Now, with the new three-class service, the carriers are introducing a domestic business cabin and upgrading the first class product.

Canada’s two national carriers began offering three classes of service on certain domestic routes in the mid-1980s. Canadian Airlines International abandoned the field in 1989, citing low demand for first class. It now offers economy plus a high-quality business class service on all domestic flights and makes first class available only on its Pacific service. Air Canada now has business and economy class cabins on all DC-9s and A-320s, the carrier’s two domestic work horses. But its key long- distance business travel routes linking Toronto with Vancouver, Alberta and sometimes Winnipeg and Montreal, are served by wide-body Boeing aircraft offering international-calibre, three-class service.

The interesting question about all this is not why U.S. carriers are acting at this time, but why they waited so long. Part of the reason lies in the traditional distinction in the U.S. industry between domestic and international carriers. American, United and Delta were originally set up to fly passengers within the country. Airlines like TWA and the now defunct-Pan Am flew beyond the U.S. borders.

But in the chaotic fallout of airline deregulation, the former homebody airlines have become global gadabouts. All the large U.S. carriers now have extensive international routes and they are buying the latest in wide-body aircraft to serve them.