Originally Posted by
conquestdz
That story is completely reasonable and has probably happened many times....most of our flying is out of Seattle. You know, the home of Boeing. A lot of people here have an emotional connection to Boeing because they and/or their families has lived off of Boeing wages for a generation or more. Some people still take a lot of pride from that and flying on an Airbus operated by an airline that used to be "Proudly all Boeing" probably would strike a nerve for them. It sounds like a reasonable story to me as I have heard it myself from passengers while deadheading.
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This is what it is. Experienced travelers with no personal connection to the Boeing community in SEA will almost invariably learn to prefer the bus over a 73 in equivalent cabin configuration.
But people from the SEA community are understandably spring-loaded on that. AS might legitimately consider that in making fleet decisions. Also need need to consider how much of their future customers will be non-SEA "west coast".