Admittedly, American hasn’t shared all the details of its plan. That wouldn’t be very smart at this point, I suppose. But it’s shared enough at a high level so that it can make its case for massive cost reductions. You can read CEO Tom Horton’s letter to the troops with the high level plan to “not just to compete, but to win.” There’s the “win” phrase again. Ugh.

In short, Tom outlines a strategy of increasing revenue by $1 billion a year while cutting costs $2 billion a year, more than half of which ($1.25 billion) will come from employees. This is the magic plan. Let’s take this one side at a time.

Plan to increase revenue by $1 billion a year
The revenue plan has three parts to it. The $1 billion a year is expected to come from “network scale, fleet optimization, and product improvements.”

Network Scale
American has laid out an ambitious (and quite likely overly aggressive) plan to increase departures by 20 percent over five years from its cornerstone markets of LA, New York, Chicago, Miami, and Dallas/Ft Worth. That’s right. TWENTY percent. For the relatively mature industry we have here in the US, this seems to be very aggressive. I was going to guess that much of this would be from smaller airplanes with fewer seats, but then I saw Tom tell Terry Maxon that the increase would be more in the international arena than domestic. That makes me think that it’s less about regional jets and more about larger aircraft growth. That could mean some serious capacity growth. It’s starting to sound like the days of old when airlines mistakenly chased market share only to hurt themselves and everyone else in the process.

This isn’t just about the 20 percent increase under the American brand, however. This is also about increasing codesharing. Right now, it can’t grow its domestic codesharing business but it has proposed eliminating those shackles. Hello, JetBlue.

Fleet optimization
At first, this seems like a cost savings and not a revenue savings, right? I mean, the airline keeps talking about adding newer, more fuel efficient airplanes and retiring older ones. That has nothing to do with revenue. But that’s not what I think the airline is talking about here. This is really American talking about growing its regional fleet. Today, there is a very tight cap on outsourcing of flying on aircraft with more than 50 seats. American has maxed it out with 47 CRJ-700s, and that’s the only aircraft American has between 50 and 136 seats.

That’s a huge disadvantage for American versus Delta and United, both of which operate about 200 to 250 regional aircraft with more than 50 seats. American is getting aggressive, shooting for the right to outsource a boatload of flying on airplanes all the way up to 88 seats. In a minor bright spot for American’s own employees, American has also ordered Airbus A319s that will give it an option below 136 seats (maybe in the 120 seat range). That’s what American means by fleet optimization, having more aircraft in between the 50 and 136 seat range that it can use to better match seat supply with demand.

Product improvements
This is something that really has nothing to do with bankruptcy. American has already suggested it would improve the onboard product, but what can it do to actually goose revenues? Well, the new flat beds that it’s putting in business class on the 777-300ER aircraft are a good start. Hopefully that expands to the rest of the international fleet, because people aren’t willing to pay a premium for the inferior product in business class today. The new premium economy section could help as well, though that also reduces the number of seats so it relies on American being able to generate a good premium to make it worthwhile.

So that’s what we see on the revenue side. Bankruptcy should allow for more liberal codesharing and regional flying contracts. That’s really it. Now let’s look at the flip side.

Plan to decrease costs by $2 billion a year
Of the $2 billion in annual savings that American wants to see, $1.25 billion will come from employees. The rest will come from a variety of things that allow American to reduce costs – get out of expensive contracts, reduce rates for suppliers, ditch assets it no longer needs, etc. But as expected, American rests the bulk of the weight on employees.

The basic proposal (and it’s only a proposal at this point) is for every work group to give up 20 percent of compensation. That doesn’t mean salaries get cut by 20 percent, but it’s a combination of all types of compensation from benefits to productivity. The cuts vary by each group, and you can read all the union term sheets here.

Some will see pay reductions, all will see pensions terminated, and benefits will cost more for the employee if American has its way. There will also be major increases in productivity. For example, for flight attendants, American wants to increase the maximum monthly hours from 77 (domestically) to 100 which will result in an average of 80 to 90 hours scheduled per person month. I won’t get into the details of each workgroup’s proposed changes, but you should definitely take a look.

In return, what will employees get? There will be company-wide profit sharing that starts with the first dollar of income. Of course, that’s for the employees that don’t get a pink slip. American will be laying off 13,000 employees, about 15 percent of the airline’s total today, and it will come from all groups. We’ll see 1,400 management positions gone, 2,300 flight attendants, and 400 pilots.

But the biggest cut comes to mechanics and fleet service workers – more than 4,000 each. Those deep cuts will come thanks to more outsourcing. American will shut one maintenance base (Alliance, in Ft Worth) and it will start to outsource a lot of work so that it doesn’t need all these employees anymore. The TWU represents both these groups and leadership sounded downright sad in its conference call discussing the proposed cuts. The pilots and flight attendants, on the other hand, sound more angry. At least the pilots don’t sound surprised. The flight attendants strangely acted like they didn’t see this coming.

Let’s back up for a second. Twenty percent more departures in five years but 15 percent fewer employees? Seems strange to think about it, but it really is all about outsourcing.

We do need to keep in mind that these are not final. There will be negotiations and the ultimate resolution will undoubtedly be less dramatic than what we’re seeing here. Regardless, the employees that remain will need to be more productive and they won’t be compensated as well for the work they do. There will need to be more flexibility with work rules, including codesharing and regional flying.

In the end, this doesn’t sound much like a turnaround plan at all. It sounds like an airline continuing to push forward with its same old strategy, just with a new fancy lower cost structure to help it stumble into profitability. I find it hard to really become a believer in this plan, since it’s nothing really new at all. If anything, US Airways, Delta, and other potential buyers should be thrilled to see the current team not really proposing anything game-changing. It gives them a bigger opening to walk through.

The Pros and Cons of American Airlines’s New First Class and Business Class – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
Just a little piece on American’s new 777 interiors. Not much more than what I wrote about here.

Waiting to board with Brett Snyder – Cheapflights.com Waiting to Board
I did an interview with Cheapflights talking about the blog and some travel tips.

A picture of the new First Class cabin shows that it’s not much different than what’s out there today. It’s just cleaned up, new fabric, etc. That’s ok, because much of a change wasn’t necessary. In Business Class, however, it’s a different story.

As you can see, American is using the same reverse-herringbone style of seat that US Airways has on its airplanes. (Calm down, conspiracy theorists. This has nothing to do with a potential merger between the two.) We can now be sure that the “fully lie flat” seats are going to be flat beds. Whew.

There are also a few things we can glean from the new coach seats.

The above picture shows coach seating, and American confirms that there will be a premium economy section with the exact same seats but more legroom. It’s like American is bringing back “More Room Throughout Coach,” but not actually throughout coach.

In this picture, there are at least 4 seats uninterrupted by an aisle. That can mean one of two things. It could mean that American is sticking with the 2-5-2 configuration that it has on its 777-200s, but that would be surprising. Most airlines have moved away from 2-5-2 to 3-3-3 instead because it requires fewer video power units and it allows for standardized seat sets. (United has switched to 3-3-3 as it renovates its 777 fleet.)

But this can’t be 3-3-3 because there are four together. That would most likely mean that American is moving to the increasingly popular 3-4-3 layout. I say “increasingly popular,” but I mean that only on the airline side. Passengers hate it because, naturally, it means narrower seats. That hasn’t stopped several airlines from going this route, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see American do the same.

We could try to do some math to figure out the number of seats across if American would release its planned configuration on the airplane, but it won’t. My requests were met with the response that no further information is being given at this time. What’s with all the secrecy? I don’t understand why they want to keep pushing out dribs and drabs of info.

Anything else we know? Yep. American had been saying that London would be the first to get the new 777-300ER, but now that’s not happening. The first market will now be Dallas/Ft Worth to Sao Paulo. This market is apparently doing so well for American that it’s throwing a ton of capacity into it. In June, the market goes from a daily flight to 12 weekly. And then in December, the 777-300ER will go on to the route, bringing even more capacity to the market.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that Latin America gets it first. After all, that’s really where American excels. It’s almost non-existent in Asia, it’s pretty weak in Europe, but it is the king of Latin. Stick to your strengths, right?

What we’re seeing is Delta being really smart, and really aggressive. That’s fun to watch from an airline that used to just be a sleepy old Southerner. The first thing people say about this is . . . there’s no way it would pass anti-trust review. But is that true? I’m not an expert in anti-trust law, but I have no doubt that Delta has been actively working with its lawyers to see what would work and what wouldn’t. If Delta is truly expressing an interest, then it’s done its homework to make sure that it would even be a possibility under the law.

I think the key here is that I imagine Delta isn’t entirely interested in walking away with all of American. Remember when I first wrote about how US Airways should buy American, I suggested that maybe US Airways wouldn’t have much interest in LA or New York? Well, guess who would be interested? That’s right, Delta.

In LA, the market is highly fragmented. I can’t imagine any sort of anti-trust concern if Delta took over American’s operation there. It might even benefit LA by finally building up a stronger single carrier. Sure, the Asian oneworld partners would have a fit, but that’s not Delta’s problem, or the US government’s.

In New York, it might be a tougher sell, but it’s not really that much of a stretch. At JFK, JetBlue carries around 40 percent of the passengers already. So Delta and American combined wouldn’t be a monopoly by any measure. LaGuardia would probably be more of a concern, but the DOT could require some more slots to be auctioned off to low cost carriers and fix that problem right up. I’m sure Delta would be happy to comply if it means eliminating a full service competitor and sprinkling the slots around to other low cost guys.

Of course, this is just one possible scenario, Delta might want Miami as well here, or some other pieces. The point is that the default assumption that the big three airlines can’t combine isn’t true. There are creative ways that they could try to come together with other entities to make a proposal that could work. With American in bankruptcy, it’s really anybody’s game to win, except American’s.

Sure, American could stay as a standalone entity, but the oddsmakers (analysts) aren’t giving that a good chance of happening. When you go into bankruptcy, you lose absolute control of your company. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get out unscathed, but it means that others are going to take a real shot.

Do I think it would be better if Delta bought American? Nah. I mean, I think it’s good to have three large airlines in three separate airlines that can compete with each other. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m against bits and pieces being moved around to make each remaining airline stronger. But would American be able to survive if Delta took New York and LA?

I don’t see why it couldn’t work if US Airways took the rest. Were I the surviving American in this case, I’d look to buy Alaska Airlines immediately to solidify at least one strong position on the west coast and take that partnership away from Delta. Not sure if that could happen or not, but the point is that there are opportunities for three large airlines to survive even if Delta “buys” American in some fashion.

Will it happen? I have no clue, but Delta would be stupid not to be sniffing around. (And in case you were wondering, United would be stupid TO be sniffing around because it’s hands are very full right now.)

–

In late October, my husband and I enjoyed a fabulous vacation in Europe. We managed to see 4 different countries, caught up with friends, and experienced as much as we could in a short time. Little did we know what was in store for us on our voyage home.

Our flight from Paris to New York was circling in the weather when the pilot informed us we were heading to Hartford, Connecticut. We’d been in the air an hour past our arrival time, and the urgency to land was apparent. We finally landed in Hartford, being told we would get back in the air as soon as possible to get to JFK.

My husband and I turned on our phones and checked AA for our reroute. We found ourselves booked out of LaGuardia on Monday morning. It was Saturday. This COULDN’T be right. Angry, I called American and waited on hold for 20 minutes to find out most of the flights at JFK were canceled and Monday was clearly the best they can do for us right now. I was encouraged to call back. Irate, I hung up the phone. My husband and I started to process the information, and to understand the spot we were in. The snow was piling up on the wings. The captain gave updates:

430p: Pilot tells us we will be here for a little while to get refueled and then de-iced
5p: Pilot says we are next in line
530p: Pilot tells us they only have one fuel and de-ice truck working so it will be awhile. He also tells us if we don’t leave by 550p his flight day is done and we have to stay here in Hartford for the night. “In my over 20 years of flying planes I can tell you that I cannot take off with slush on the runway. Folks, I’m looking at an inch of slush on the runway and there is no equipment working to clear it.”
6p: Pilot tells us that we know we are here for the night and still no news on fuel or de-ice. The pilot seems more upset, but tells us the airline is working to find hotels for us.

At this point my husband got angry. The American app on our phone still showed us leaving LaGuardia on Monday morning, so he called American. We had a new strategy and asked about flights out of Hartford on Sunday. He was told the first flight we could get on was around 10p. This seemed absurd to us, he hangs up still angry but feeling better after doing something about it. This was a lesson we learned: Do something with your anger. Don’t sit and stew.

7p: Pilot tells us that there is only 1 international gate here and that there are no customs officials to deplane us. Therefore we have to stay on plane
8p: Pilot tells us that we will be heading to the gate to deplane.
820p: Pilot tells us that he isn’t sure if we’ll get to gate, he tells us getting information out of these people is like pulling teeth
9p: Pilot says we are going to head to another gate and then we will deplane and be held in the terminal area by that gate since we can’t go anywhere until we clear customs
915p: Pilot tells us that we will wait to get the international gate but we can not get off plane until everyone from the Swiss flight in front of us clears customs. All 300 of them.

At this point I was on the phone with American. I booked that flight out at 10p, hoping that when we got on the ground I could make something better happen.

We’d been given snacks and water regularly while we were sitting on the tarmac for 8 hours. The bathrooms were functioning. The mood was patient on the plane, which was surprising. In the row in front of us, a single mom had been entertaining her year-old daughter. This mother had worked HARD all trip, and the baby had been none the wiser of our predicament. We were honestly in awe of her patience and ingenuity to keep that baby happy. Lesson #2: It could still be worse. We were trying to get home to our own children, and could fully appreciate how different this experience would have been if our children were trapped there with us.

1020p: Pilot tells us that we are going to the gate
1025p: Pilot tells us the power is out in the terminal so the gate isn’t working, we will have to exit on tarmac
1050p: Doors open and we can deplane
11p: We enter customs area
1130p: We clear customs — without our bags. Can we even do that?
1140p: We get to baggage area and are told that our bags can’t be taken off the plane because they don’t have equipment at this airport for our size plane and shuttles will be coming to bus us to the other terminal
1150p: We bus over to other terminal
midnight: We arrive at terminal to find a spot to sleep
1215a: We are lucky enough to find spot where they are first giving out cots and sheets for sleeping
1230a: We settle in to sleep. Here’s a video of the sleeping situation in the ticketing area at the Hartford airport:

1a: 6’7″ 350 lb Bostonian decides to pull up a cot next to us and shake the windows with his snoring
2a: Windows still shaking and many people are awake
4a: We wake up for the day
7a: We get to American counter.

While in line to speak to the lone American employee, we witnessed some interesting drama. The Europeans from our flight got angry. First a few men were angry at the only employee trying to help us. Then they turned on themselves. A French lady in the crowd started chastising the lead man who was giving the employee a hard time. “It is not her fault!” she told him. The French lady brought calm to the crowd, and we resumed our spaces in line. The man in front of us sat next to my husband on the plane. We knew he was French and was trying to get to Cleveland. He gave the American employee a hard time.

He was put back on our flight, which left for JFK that afternoon, and arrived 45 minutes before his connection to Chicago, where he would then have to figure out his flight to Cleveland. She told him this was the best she could do. We also needed to get to Chicago, and when it was our turn we suggested the same itinerary. She admitted to us that there was no real chance of making that connection and thought our plan to fly from Hartford to O’Hare directly was a better one. She printed our boarding passes to Chicago. Lesson # 3 — being nice pays. We again questioned if we could get our luggage. She confirmed we would be abandoning it to fly home from there.

We took our tickets and passed through security 15 hours early…

11a: See there are 2 spots open on flight to Chicago at 2pm, I call American Airlines and get us booked…We will be home by 4pm
130p: We board the flight
2p: We take off for Chicago…
4p (Chicago Time): We land in Chicago!!!!

After some time had passed, we remembered more of the fabulous experiences on our trip and less about the unfortunate circumstances of our return. The airline had compensated us with vouchers and miles.

We will fly again, we have already booked a trip for the whole family. I will not boycott a single airline, because I saw planes from every airline I could fly stuck in the same predicament. I vow to fly directly whenever possible. We love to travel and experience new places, and this bad experience will not keep us from enjoying our hobby. We will be smart and prepared for our next trip in February. Wish us luck!

–
Corry Stanley lives in the Chicago suburbs with her 2 and 4 year old sons, husband of nearly ten years, and two rescue dogs. She’s a native Wisconsinite, lifelong Packer fan, and an IT professional. She tweets infrequently at @corry_s.

Is CrankyConcierge.com’s real-time airline travel management service worth it? – Airline Crazy
MrSkyGuy gave our service a shot recently and he was pleased. Of course, since his flights went on time, he didn’t get to see us doing what we do best, but he still found it valuable for the price.

Holiday Card Is So Nice, American Sent It Twice – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw that American decided to recycle an old card for the holidays this year.

American Airlines About to Make a lot of People Much Happier – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
Great news from American this week as it followed in Continental’s footsteps and added “incoming flight” information to its flight status. This is great news.

Delta’s Bag Tracking App: Game Changer? – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
Delta has rolled out a nifty little bag tracking app on the iPhone which builds on the website. Tracking your bag like FedEx is awesome.

In the Trenches: How to Treat the Media – Intuit Small Business Blog
We had a blogger use Cranky Concierge for a trip, and that left us thinking about if we should treat him any differently. (We didn’t.)

Spirit Grows Dallas/Ft Worth
Spirit has has now refocused on domestic flying, and DFW is getting a big new spot on the map. This expansion will see one flight per day to Atlanta, Boston, New York/La Guardia, and Orlando. It also announced a day later that it was going to add a daily flight to Mesa (outside of Phoenix) as well.

Let’s be clear on this one: this doesn’t hurt American much. Sure, it has the potential to siphon off some seriously price sensitive travelers on to Spirit, but American shouldn’t be targeting those people anyway. The flight times here aren’t very good with a redeye on the DFW-Boston and Mesa-DFW flights and some mid-day runs on the others. This isn’t going to pull off business travelers in any way, and I can’t imagine Spirit wants to do that. Just as it has tried to do in Chicago and in Vegas, Spirit sees an opportunity to go with super low fares and skim traffic off the bottom.

For Spirit, the timing was perfect. Spirit thrives on using outrageous slogans or promos to get free press. So when Spirit saw American file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it was too good to ignore. The press release makes that clear with references to a “new chapter in Dallas/Fort Worth’s history” along with $11 fares. You have to love an opportunistic airline. Spirit is like a parasite that lives off the misfortune of others – it’s brilliant.

This really shouldn’t be viewed as much of an assault on American, but many will draw the parallel. And American, like most legacy airlines, has nothing against irrational response so we’ll see where this goes. But American isn’t the only one that’s thinking about these moves. . . .

JetBlue Starts Boston to DFW
Another move that would seem to be more alarming to American is JetBlue’s decision to fly Boston to DFW three times daily. JetBlue has avoided DFW so far, and it has a strong relationship with American, so this might seem curious. Why is JetBlue doing this? I think it’s more about Spirit than American.

Is JetBlue trying to make a move on American’s turf? Well, it is doing that, but I don’t think it’s particularly targeting American. JetBlue stands to benefit through greater cooperation with American after the bankruptcy process wraps up, and it wants to be a strong partner. That makes this seem like an odd move.

And that’s why I think this is more about Spirit. JetBlue has previously been VERY aggressive at tackling ultra low cost carriers. When Allegiant announced it would begin flying from Long Beach to Las Vegas, JetBlue ramped up to offer 5 daily flights in the market and launched the additional flights with a $19 each way sale. Overkill? Yeah, probably. But then again, Allegiant pulled out.

JetBlue has tried a similar move with Spirit. Less than a week after Spirit announced it would do a daily flight from Chicago to Boston, JetBlue added a fourth flight on that route. While JetBlue doesn’t care about competing on Boston to Myrtle Beach and it probably accepts Spirit flying to its home base in Ft Lauderdale, it’s not going to be willing to sit there while Spirit moves in on other destinations. That’s why I think we’re seeing this move.

Delta Steals Gol from American
In a completely unrelated blow to American, Delta signed an “exclusive” deal with Brazil’s Gol to be the only US partner with the airline. That means that American’s current partnership with the airline is going to disappear. Delta paid a pretty hefty price to get in on this – it had to invest $100 million in Gol and now has a seat on the Board of Directors.

While I can’t imagine this has anything to do with American’s bankruptcy (this kind of agreement had to be be in the works long before), I do think it was more about Delta feeling a little desperate about Latin America. Avianca/TACA and COPA will all be in Star Alliance. Though I don’t think it’s been announced, the combined LAN and TAM have to pick an alliance, and the scuttlebutt is that they’re leaning toward oneworld (as they should). That leaves Delta with a messy Aerolineas Argentinas and absolutely no presence in the increasingly important Brazilian market. This was an effort to buy a place in that market, and it’s a place that American likely won’t need assuming LAN brings TAM into oneworld.

So, lots of moves that impact American recently, but it’s not a direct hit, as the title of this post says.

[Original surfer photo via Flickr user The Pug Father/CC 2.0]

Ok, so maybe that exact reaction would be a little strong, but the point is that American should publicly tell Alec Baldwin that he’s not welcome on the silver birds again until he apologizes to the crew involved.

Why go to such extremes? Had it just ended last week after the incident played out, then I’d say it’s best to just let it go. But Alec continues to egg American on every day. First, he “apologized” on the Huffington Post. But it wasn’t an apology to the airline and its crew – only to the passengers who were delayed.

Then he went on to Saturday Night Live posing as the captain on the flight (with only 3 stripes on his “captain” uniform, harrumph), and just rubbed it in the airline’s face. It was pretty funny. See for yourself.

American should strike back, but not for PR reasons. American should do it for its employees.

What exactly happened on that airplane? I have no idea, but it doesn’t matter. My guess is that it was the same struggle that happens every day. He wouldn’t turn off his phone even though it was time to go, and then an argument ensued. It got heated enough that they threw him off the flight. Keep in mind, American isn’t doing this for fun. It has to enforce that policy thanks to federal regulations. So, he can complain all he wants about how an electronic device won’t bring an airplane down, but that’s not American’s problem. Maybe the employee was overzealous in trying to get him to shut it off, but that doesn’t matter here. The path forward should be clear.

With Alec taunting American on a daily basis, the employees are getting angry. American should jump on board and support them.

Tom Horton took over the CEO job just a couple weeks ago when the airline filed for bankruptcy protection. This is a chance for him to leave his mark, showing that he’s going to support his people. It’s a small gesture that would show a very different American Airlines. It should come directly from the top, and it should show a different kind of tone. If Tom can do impressions, I’d say they should throw him in front of a camera pretending to be Alec Baldwin. If he’s what we come to expect of American management, then we’ll need to find someone else with comedic timing. There are a lot of creative people at American that could put something good together, all with Tom taking the lead as the face of the response.

Though people love to hate airlines, people would support American here. Take a look at the sampling of the nearly 2,500 comments on American’s Facebook post about the incident. Sure, some support Alec, but there is a lot of support for American here. (And yes, some are employees, but still.)

And, though I hate touching on politics here, since Alec Baldwin is trotted out as a stereotypical Hollywood liberal time and time again, the right would love to see him put in his place. And the left, well, they aren’t going to care.

Will the studio be mad? I doubt it. This just generates more publicity for Alec, and this wouldn’t be really bad publicity.

But the point is that the employees of the airline would love it. They’d love to see their new management team taking a bold stand to support them. And if the airline used some humor in the response, it would really show a different kind of American Airlines. That’s exactly what Tom Horton needs to do now. He needs people to forget the Gerard Arpey era and move on to something new.

So, come on Tom. Put together something fun here and take a stand to support your people. The exact details of the incident don’t matter, but the fact that Alec keeps rubbing it in your face should be enough to get you out there.

[Original photo from Team America: World Police]

American started by ordering a couple of the 777-300ER aircraft awhile back, but it has now grown the order to include 10 airplanes. This will be the new flagship of the international fleet, which currently comprises 777-200s, 767-300s, and some 757-200s. Service starts next year to London, but that’s all we know. What’s so special about this airplane, which will have the most seats and longest range in the fleet?

“Wi-Fi capability to keep customers connected while traveling internationally”
American has domestic wifi, but it hasn’t talked about international wi-fi at all up until now. American wouldn’t comment on who would provide wifi.

“walk-up bar stocked with snacks and refreshments in the premium cabin will be a first for any U.S. airline “
Most US airlines haven’t been able to justify using space for a bar instead of just having more seats, but apparently American now feels otherwise.

“Entertainment options including up to 120 movies, more than 150 TV programs and more than 350 audio selections”
You can get audio/video on demand in the premium cabins, but the 767s and 757s still have overhead screens in coach. The 777s have looping movies in-seat, which is slightly better, but it’s nothing compared to what the new 777-300s will have.

“every seat will feature individual 110 volt AC power outlets and USB jacks”
Today, most of American’s international fleet has those cigarette lighter power ports that require adapters in the premium cabin. In coach, some airplanes have random seats with scattered access to power, but most have nothing.

“feature an updated and enhanced version of the customer-favorite Flagship Suite seat that transforms into a fully lie flat six-foot, eight-inch bed with drop-down armrests that allow for easier access and more sleeping space”
The 757s and 767s don’t have First Class, but the 777s do. This will just be an updated and improved version of that.

“Business Class cabin will also be outfitted with fully lie flat seats – all with aisle access”
Today, American offers that uncomfortable angled lie-flat seat that was obsolete the day it was announced. The airline is finally going to go to what I assume to be a truly flat bed. I say that I assume it’s flat, because the terminology used (“fully lie flat”) is a mix of the traditional “lie flat” (which means angled) and “fully flat” (which means fully flat). I couldn’t get any other information.

“monitor positioned in each Business Class suite”
The angled lie flat beds the airline has today uses a portable unit that’s fitted into a bracket on the seat. So American is getting rid of that and going back to an embedded system.

“Seats throughout Economy Class will have a higher recline pivot, providing increased knee room. The seat bottom will articulate”
This could go one of two ways. Cathay Pacific went with the seat that reclines into itself, and, well, people hate it with a passion. But the idea isn’t a bad one, if it’s done right. Will this be done right?

“American will also offer an Economy Class premium seat product, which will include additional legroom for seats in the forward portion of the cabin”
With United having Economy Plus and Delta having a similar Economy Comfort offering, it’s not a surprise that American is trying this. But will the seat be any different? Will the service be any different? Beats me. No other info was given, though it sounds like it will probably be the same seat.

Reading this, you probably have the same first question I did . . . . Will American roll this out to the rest of the fleet? No clue. I also found out there are no pictures available, and there are really no other details to be had. This announcement, full of tremendously interesting yet incomplete news, has to stand on its own for now. Bummer.

Other than the press release, I did see an email was sent to AAdvantage members, but there hasn’t been much media coverage. Why? No pictures and not a ton of details. Why would you announce such major enhancements like that if you’re American? This is a big deal, and it makes American at least competitive and at best a true leader when compared to its other US competitors. The lack of additional information just seems so strange.

Anyone else have any info about this? Because it sounds fantastic, assuming it happens.

[Hangar photo via Flickr user kevin dooley/CC 2.0]