American Airlines Confirms B/E Aerospace Super Diamond as New Business Class Seat

by Gary Leff

American Airlines has had a terrible time getting to the finish line replacing all of its international widebody angled flat seats with flat beds with all aisle access.

They introduced the Boeing 777-300ER with an outstanding off the shelf Cirrus seat that’s found in Cathay Pacific and EVA Air business class.


Boeing 777-300ER Business Class

The seat for American’s 767s is fully flat with all seats having direct aisle access. But 767s are narrower aircraft, so the seats are narrower as well.


Boeing 767 New Business Class

However they were working on their own concept seat that was going to be even more spacious for the conversion of 777-200s and for Boeing 787s. The design got cut back, there were delays, and indeed Boeing 777-200s aren’t even close to done with the conversion.


Boeing 777-200 New Business Class (Zodiac)

Delivery of American’s Boeing 787s were delayed because this new seat wasn’t available from manufacturer Zodiac.


Boeing 787 Business Class

So American terminated its contract and sued Zodiac, and went shopping for a new seat.

I guessed they’d go with B/E Aerospace which had an off-the-self fully flat seat that made sense — the Super Diamond. B/E Aerospace was later announced as the provider of American’s new premium economy seat and new domestic first class seat, and outed itself as the supplier for all 3 classes of service American’s Airbus A350s on order.

American has confirmed to me that B/E Aerospace will provide the new business class seats, not just on the Airbus A350s, and that the seat will be the Super Diamond.

Here’s a generic version of the seat:

I’m waiting to learn more about the specific configuration of the seats American has ordered. But it’s the excellent seat that Qatar is using and that Virgin Australia just started flying in the past few days on Sydney – Los Angeles that looks fantastic.


Virgin Australia B/E Aerospace Super Diamond Business Seat

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Glad to see no one left a comment here except me. Just confirms most readers HATE you, Gary!!!

  2. @Glad not most readers, your hate is likely enough to cover most who don’t. But thanks for reading, and engaging! I’ll take the strong Facebook sharing of the post that’s gone on though for what it’s worth.

  3. Virgin Australia have been flying these seats on their domestic trans-con A330s since August last year. Seats are excellent.

  4. This is very good news indeed! Do you know if they will, at some point, be addressing the shaking issue on the already installed Zodiac seats?

  5. Qatar 777 seat is very good. Very spacious, if lacking privacy. 787 seat is very very very cramped.

  6. Personally, I think American should have went with the USAirways Envoy class for their business class. It was actually a good product with the exception of the food service. Not a really big fan of non uniformity however I can understand. At least there will be uniformity within particular subfleets. Might be a tad bit annoying however being in business in a 767 and then your connecting flight is a 777-300ER. It will be business class, however not the same product.

  7. I don’t suppose that the 76’s that do Hawaii runs will be included in this lovely retrofit?

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