Delta Air Lines has a crazy new configuration that’s been leaked for its Airbus A321neo aircraft – with 44 first class seats – as leaked by aviation watchdog JonNYC. This would entail 11 rows of standard first class, whereas you rarely see more than five (20 seats) in an Airbus A321 flying domestically.
DL: I wonder WTF this 321Neo subfleet config that has 44 (!) first class seats is? New charter config or something? (just a terrible guess.)
Possibly coming next year.— JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 11:35 PM
44FC, 54 C+, 66 MC
— JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 11:51 PM
44FC, 54 C+, 66 MC
— JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 11:51 PM
.. (with an empty business class section) and filling them in with Recaro First Class seats. Note the C+ and MC seat counts are the same as what was leaked for the TCON config. They will be put into normal revenue service. Don’t know where yet. Better than paying for brand new aircraft to sit…”
— JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) September 17, 2025 at 8:05 AM
The airline has taken delivery of several A321neos in premium configuration – meant to have 148 seats including lie flat business class. But the planes are sitting in the desert and haven’t entered service. This is because seats have not yet been certified.
The supply and fit-out of aircraft interiors has faced significant delays due to regulatory requirements, complex in seat designs (flat beds with doors and electronics), and supply chain constraints. Safran, whose VUE seat is expected to be in these Delta jets, is frequently cited in these discussions.
Rather than paying on jets and just keeping them in storage thanks to certification delays – it appears that Delta has been taking these planes complete except for an “empty business class section” – they’ll be filling up the front cabin with standard Recaro domestic-style first class seats. These will go into standard service rather than long haul for the time being, and should be great for awards, upgrades, and discount premium fares.
Fly ’em if you got ’em.
Given that I presume they’ll still want the flat-beds from JFK, my guess is that the good people of Boston may have just seen some various transcon upgrade chances increase.
@Tim Dunn was ahead of the game on this; he mentioned the seat issue within the past week or so. I was saying, why not adopt what jetBlue, TAP, Singapore, FlyDubai, etc. have done with their a321neo and 737max, 2-2, 1-1, 2-2, etc. lie-flat. No need to re-invent the wheel.
Delta should put these premium-heavy A321neos exclusively on SWA’s most profitable routes into DCA, DEN, MDW & AUS and offer free Q425 upgrades for the top Rapid Rewards fliers. Bob Jordan doesn’t even know who his million milers are…
Ouch!
1990
yes, I knew something like this was coming. and I believe they will be targeted, I would bet, these get deployed on ATL to west markets.
@Tim Dunn — Probably a good idea; the transcon, outside of JFK-LAX/SFO, needs some TLC, too. ATL, FLL, MIA, BOS, DTW, etc. to LAX, SFO, PDX, SEA are still 5+ hour flights, and often a redeye. Having lie-flat is a game-changer (that’s what B6 Mint has done right).
And, who/what is your source? You gotta guy on the inside, or is that you?
I have no source. I think things through.
They will not use these in any market that currently has D1 on a regular basis.
and DL sends any new fleet/oddball to ATL where there is enormous demand that other hubs don’t have.
Having a bunch of Diamonds see upgrades clear would be a nice improvement as they re-evaluate their end of year, beginning of 2026 flying.
He does have a guy on the inside, 1990. Don’t kid yourself. He’s not that smart 😉
He wishes he did though.
Also why he gets so mad when JonNYC gets a scoop that his Delta buddy didn’t give to him
no, Max, the reason I dislike alot of what Jon does is when he posts internal company docs and when he (and others including this site) attribute something to Jon that has been well-discussed on multiple sites.
no one else that I have seen has come up w/ the solution for these grounded 321NEOs which is why I am happy to tip my hat to Jon if this info becomes real.
*wishes he did have those smarts though*
Really is funny you pretend like you don’t have a very documented past, Tim. Nice try to seem smart, though.
It seems to me that cabin seating is exceptionally overregulated. I can understand careful regulation of engines, navigation, communications, structural and control components, etc., but cabin seating would seem to present only the most marginal safety concerns with little real world safety gains, but keeps so many new aircraft on the ground.
Of course, incumbent seat manufacturers have every reason to support this overregulation as it keeps competitors out of the market, even if it poses some hassles for their own firms.
Other than BOS-LAX isn’t Delta flying the 321N on all sorts of other BOS transcon routes? SFO, SEA, SAN, etc…
ATL to LAX, SFO, SEA already see 757 flat bed service, no?
Just feels like ‘upgrading’ BOS is the logical thing to do, and maybe throw a couple in SEA just to mess with AS a bit.
I flew Athens to London on BA A321 with FIFTY-TWO business class passengers on Monday!
@HT Slight difference in product between Club Europe and Delta domestic first class. 😉
Imagine being a stockholder of Delta and knowing they have brand new planes grounded and are going to have to refit them twice because they couldn’t line up their supply chain…
Is this why I’m on a A339 (neo) from LAS to ATL in December? I can’t imagine it’s due to all of that wintertime demand to/from Las Vegas! Certianly they could’ve found a B739 to replace a A321 with and not a wide body meant for over water!
@MaxPower — 100%. I’m a fan of EU/UK 261 regulation, but I’m no fan of what they do with ‘Business Class’ in Europe on regional flights. 2-2 recliners are far superior to 3-3 ‘blocked’ middle.
Mak,
the supposedly Safran seats DL selected failed the crash tests a couple of times. I would like there to be quality controls including for survivability of seats and their occupants during crashes.
Andy,
imagine being a stockholder of UAL that watched their CEO double down on orders of both MAXs and 787s during covid even though both programs were heavily delayed and still are. Imagine having more committed capex than the rest of the entire US airline combined.
of imagine being a stockholder of LH Group that has failed seat selection exercises multiple times and still can’t come up w/ a plan like DL is doing which is at least to put certifiable seats on the plane.
Jeff W,
DL always uses widebodies on ATL-western US flights during the winter that see only narrowbodies the rest of the year.
@Tim Dunn — Never miss a chance to throw shade on United, eh? As for DL’s unique seasonal wide-body sightings, I’ve seen FLL, MCO, CVG, random 763s to ATL, and regularly 767/a330 ATL-JFK, which is nicer than 737/a321.
1990
Andy seems to never miss a chance to throw shade at DL. DL figured out its temporary plan for these planes far faster than LH or UA or AA or a dozen other airlines that have seat certification or simply Boeing delays.
Airbus has done a pretty good job at getting planes to DL.
This is a seat certification failure which undoubtedly allows DL to walk away from the contract; they just have to find something in the place of these temporary seats.
There may be damages due to DL from Safran and other users of this seat; Boeing has given enormous amounts of customer compensation due to delays on its aircraft.
and yes, DL uses widebodies at its biggest stations to sub for other aircraft, to add capacity and to do crew training on shorter domestic flights.
Peter
I fly SEA-JFK regularly, by far the most frequent is the standard-layout A321neo. Before that it was a retro 737. The difference from SFO and LAX is quite literally painful. I haven’t seen lie-flat in a while, but I don’t even consider the red eye anymore.
Tim Dunn says, “Andy, imagine being a stockholder of UAL that watched their CEO…”
Increase their market cap 126% while your primary competitor increased theirs 33%.
@Mak
Tell that to the pax on the Delta flight that ended upside down last winter.
@ Gary — WOW! For the first time in years, Diamonds will be able to get free upgrades…maybe. I suspect DL will sell these dirt cheap, thereby still denying free upgrades.
@JL
lol. Imagine writing something in the eyes of a shareholder. Which you actually did. Well said, sir 😉
Seat safety is a huge deal. It can mean the end of your life if you go flying through the cabin. Seat malfunctions do happen. I want rule complying seats. Delta had its hands tied here.
JL,
and you conveniently left out that UAL’s market cap was half of DL’s post covid and has improved to about 85% of DAL’s.
So, yeah, good for UAL increasing the value of its stock but it still trails DAL with a market cap difference of $4 billion which is way more than the value of these limited fleet of A321NEOs.
IOW, if Andy had thought things through before he threw shade there would be no basis for his comments.
How about you tell us the value of UA’s orderbook relative to its market cap and you might get a hint as to why investors don’t value DAL and UAL equally.
While a whole lot of people love to gush over the size of UAL’s order book, all of those commitments come at a cost.
and DL has still managed to get more widebodies delivered new to it over the past 2 years than UAL has.
and DL didn’t have to run to Airbus to fix United’s excessive dependence on Boeing when MAX delays really started to ramp up.
I get how much the “let’s slam ’em” mindset exists but some of y’all really would do well to think through the implications of what you write and let it go when it is clear you have no basis for your argument.
164 seat plane with 98 “premium” seats.. yeah if I was in Network Planning, Id stick these in SEA.
MaxPower said, “lol. Imagine writing something in the eyes of a shareholder. Which you actually did. Well said, sir ”
It is pretty obvious whose shareholders are happier since Kirby came to UAL.
TD said, “85% of DAL’s.”
UAL’s market cap is actually 89% of DAL’s and closing fast.
“How about you tell us the value of UA’s orderbook relative to its market cap”
What I can tell you is during the same period that UAL’s market cap grew at 4X the rate of DAL’s United added 155 more mainline aircraft and owns 40 more aircraft while paying down debt to a point to which the two airline’s net debt is about the same. Pretty amazing. Clearly, UAL can manage their order book and their finances as their credit rating is well on the way to investment grade.
UA: 1,050 aircraft, (227 WB), 187 WB/488 NB on order, 15.6 average fleet age
DA: 992 aircraft, (177 WB), 28 WB/240 NB on order, 14.9 average fleet age
AA: 1,000 aircraft, (134 WB), 22 WB/280 NB on order, 14.1 average fleet age
It is also clear that United is much better at managing aircraft renovations and standardization.
It’ just a matter of time.
JL,
UAL was undervaluved; so was AAL. By most financial stats, DAL is also undervalued.
UAL is earning comparable to DAL – as long as it DOES NOT settle w/ its labor unions because, if it did, UAL’s earnings would fall by perhaps $1 billion/year.
UAL’s balance sheet is not in near as good of a shape including the massive capex that other airlines do not have.
UAL is growing its mainline fleet so aggressively in order to make up for its much smaller domestic network and revenues compared not just to DL but also AA.
I won’t even touch your last comment about standardization other than to say that what is MORE STANDARD as UA’s lower quality current business class product. DL has a higher percentage of mainline aircraft w/ high speed free WiFi while UA has precisely ZERO mainline aircraft with that feature right now. DL has a higher percentage of its fleet with seatback AVOD than UA.
but the real issue is that you just like others want to argue shades of gray because someone made the stupid comment
“Imagine being a stockholder of Delta and knowing they have brand new planes grounded and are going to have to refit them twice because they couldn’t line up their supply chain…”
while acting like a subfleet of DL 321NEOs is anywhere comparable to the fiasco that has been UAL’s order book and Boeing’s deliveries over the past 5 years – none of which has had any material connection to the stock price.
The UA F/As are the only employee group underpaid relative to the industry and UA has said it won’t affect its earnings guidance. The F/As will get an industry-leading deal just like the pilots did on the second TA.
TD says, “UAL’s balance sheet is not in near as good of a shape including the massive capex that other airlines do not have.”
Future Capex is not included on the balance sheet and UAL has the second highest market cap of any airline on earth and investment grade is just around the corner. UAL’s finances are in great shape.
With the amazingly positive trajectory United is on it is only a matter of time.
JL,
I am not going to rain on your parade but
1. Why does it take 2 times or more and many years for UA employees to get a contract? and you wonder why DL employees want nothing to do w/ the collective bargaining agreement. Even for pilots, DL agreed to a contract 2X what UA pilots rejected and which UA ended up paying its pilots.
2. ask UA mechanics if they are paid at market wages and w/ industry leading work rules
3. Financial commitments are not on the balance sheet, true, but they are disclosed because the company does have to keep those commitments at the expense of other things including earnings.
4. DAL and LUV have investment grade ratings now and the ratings agencies have not indicated they are ready to raise UAL’s ratings.
5. UAL has more debt partially offset by much larger amounts of cash on hand, the latter partly because UA does not want to get caught having to pay this massive capex if cash flow falls in a black swan event.
UAL’s finances are better than industry average but are not industry leading
None of which changes that UA, just like AA and DL and a whole lot of other airlines are suffering from supply chain issues.
For DL and probably also AA which also has (an) aircraft parked in Europe, it is due to seat manufacturer issues. Boeing’s delivery delays have saved UA from having to shell out much larger amounts for capex while forcing them to hold onto other aircraft and slowing their growth, all of which impact their earnings and balance sheet.
For anyone to argue that DL is anywhere close to being more impacted by supply chain issues than other airlines is just childishly foolish
Speaking of Delta, did y’all know if you used ‘pay with miles’ (and cash), then cancel for an eCredit, you have to literally call in to use it? In all my years, I had never run into this. See, even frequent flyers (and Diamond Medallions) can still learn new things. Probably shouldn’t have to call-in, but, hey, gives us a chance to make friends with someone ‘on the inside’… Anyway, Portland’s not happenin’ (sorry, David PDX and Yoni PDX). *sigh*