American Airlines will be modifying their Airbus A319s to have an additional row of first class. They won’t be taking out coach seats – they’ll net be adding seats to the planes and reducing legroom.
The A319s that had been ordered by American Airlines prior to being taken over by US Airways management had seat back entertainment screens. These new, densified aircraft will no longer have seat back screens.
The planes have only 8 seats up front, compared to 16 on Boeing 737s and 20 on Airbus A321neos.
American has limited its revenue potential without enough first class seats to sell to passengers. It’s not that upgrades are tough on these planes – buying first class can be tough on many routes.
Legacy American Airlines Airbus A319 First Class, With Just 8 Seats And Entertainment Screens
It’s not just legroom that’s going to be squeezed on Airbus A319 planes to fit in more seats. They nip and tuck everywhere on the aircraft. For instance, this is the last row of the ‘densified’ Oasis configuration 737 that American Airlines flies.
They squeeze the lavatories for space. They squeeze the galleys for space. They’re even going to stick a flight attendant jump seat on the lavatory. Here’s a sketch from the crew manual:
And here’s the layout, showing the number 4 jump seat attached to the lav in the rear galley:
When American Airlines introduced smaller lavatories, with sinks nost deep enough so water sprayed back onto passengers and with doors that slammed into each other, then-CEO Doug Parker defended their cabin layout decisions as being not as bad as Delta’s, whom he mocked for a lavatory setup he thought was worse… putting in jumpseats that blocked the lavatory.
What did Delta do with these same lavs though, Delta had like the crew seat on the door or some ridiculous thing (cackles) that’s not a threat, I just.. I don’t know why I felt.. that’s really funny.. I don’t know why I felt compelled..
United now does this, with the Spaceflex lavatories they use on their Airbus A321. Here’s what it looks like:
With the A321N becoming more frequent, please keep this in mind.
byu/InformalCommittee507 inunitedairlines
Parker, though, doubled down and promised American Airlines would never do something like this,
Delta has done an amazing job with their product and their customer service. They get more seats on the same size airplane than we do. They do things for example like put flight attendant jump seats on the door of the restroom. I promise. You can’t sit in your jump seat if someone wants to use the restroom. We’re not ever gonna do anything like that.
Yet that’s exactly now what they’re doing. It’s not just customers who get squeezed at American Airlines – it’s flight attendants, too.
I’m old enough to remember where you could be comfortable on a Pan AM flight even to Japan. Flight attendants were always courteous and helpful. Ready to do anything to help your flight be more enjoyable. Entertainment, you had full screens for movies and they provided books for your children to read and even slippers so your feet could be more comfortable. I Miss the old days.
Bring back the weight restrictions for the FA.
There’s got to be something illegal about making the flight attendants sit on the lavatory seats. For one, there’s no safety belt. I imagine there’s other safety issues, too.
You can blame the CEO all you want, but if they fire him, the next guy will do the same or worse. The greedy shareholders want a great return and will elect a board who will appoint a CEO. AA is 98% collectively owned by you and me (through funds and individual stocks). So enjoy your ride.
This is exactly why I would rather drive for 12hrs than I had fly for 2. At 6’7″ tall there is no place to but my body, especially legs. I can just spread out in my 3/4 ton crew cab Ram pickup and drive in comfort.
This seems like much ado about nothing.
I could see being upset if the new A321 XLR’s had this set up (like Iberia’s do.)
A319’s mostly do short haul, sub 3 hour flights.
They only have 3 FA’s.
So one will be in the front and two in the back. Suring cruise. There are still two spare jump seats for the FA’s to sit in besides the one on the lav door.
The FA’s must really hate CRJ-700’s where the rear jump seat pulls out in front of the lav door.
Cue more APFA whining.
Ummm… Parker resigned as CEO in 2023, Chairman shortly after that the Chair of the board. Not sure what his years old rambling has to do with anything.