With domestic air travel on the uptick, and to leisure destinations in particular, U.S. airlines are moving their ‘rolling stock’ around to make the most of it by using bigger planes with more premium seats on domestic routes.
Among the moves are United’s extension of seasonal service between New York/Newark and Maui, Hawaii to nearly year-round, and equipping it with its most premium-rich ‘High-J” 767, with 46 Polaris business-class pods and a raft of premium economy seats.
Delta has also moved one of its newest and swankiest planes an A330-900neo, into domestic service, starting with JFK-Seattle on June 5, and with more to come. The plane is usually used on long flagship flights like Seattle to Shanghai, but for the past year, it’s hardly flown at all.
American, which has sometimes used its international fleet between domestic hubs as a way to move them into place, is now using some of its wide-bodied 777s and 787s on high-density domestic routes, including flights to Orlando from Chicago and Philadelphia, and to Las Vegas from Chicago, Dallas, Miami and Philadelphia.
