American Airlines Brings Back Blankets, Pillows To Redeye First Class Flights

by Gary Leff

Customers have started reporting that they’re seeing blankets and pillows back in domestic first class on American Airlines. That’s on cross country redeye flights.

These are standard amenities for premium ‘transcon’ flights like Los Angeles to New York, but haven’t been on Seattle to Miami or San Francisco to Philadelphia overnights since prior to the pandemic.

It’s being greeted by customers online as “very welcome news” and a “small step in the right direction.”

American Airlines confirms to me, “We started providing blankets and pillows to domestic first class on red-eye transcon flights this summer.”

Sometimes I think American Airlines is its own worst enemy in marketing. When they do something positive they don’t really tell anyone about it? How are customers supposed to know they’ll enjoy the product more – that it is improved! – and be willing to spend more money for it, if the airline doesn’t tell people that they’ve improved it?

And I worry that when very few know they’ve invested in the product, it won’t do as much to move the needle on revenue, and it’ll look like the investment failed – one more piece of evidence that people are buying on schedule and price, so why invest further?

So I’m on a mission: when the airline makes a great investment, I want people to know about it! Redeye flights are rough, and while I don’t get cold inflight, standard domestic seats aren’t really padded well enough to get comfy. I usually use the blanket as an extra seat pad or cushion.

Maybe you can’t make the most of a pillow without greater recline than domestic first class offers, but you can use it as a side pillow or bolster.

In other words, everyone will use them differently, but they’re tools for comfort that are far more conveniently provided to passengers than bringing them yourself. Great to see!

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. Sorry, pillows and blankets in recliner seats are just extra crap I have to shove in the seatback pocket. If they are available upon request, great. I prefer to board to an empty seat.

  3. Wow, since my last flight in 2005 (when I used to put in over 100,000 miles/year in the ’90’s), I hadn’t realized how much air travel really has come to resemble an inter-city bus. SMH. Nope.

  4. AA is trying to become premium like Delta, but it will take more than pillows and blankets to achieve that.

  5. You’re absolutely right, AA does a terrible job at marketing themselves. I think it’s just because there is so little vision coming from the top.

  6. They are probably hesitant to announce the good news. If they do, they will just have that many more requests for compensation every time a passenger doesn’t receive their pillow. Lol.

  7. Me thinks that when some bean counter decides to get rid of them again, like what happened during COVID hysteria, then AA can claim never said it was an enhancement to begin with.

  9. I use the pillow to help my lower back and sometimes use the blanket to pad the seat since a lot of seats have compressed padding that doesn’t do the job. Asian airlines never got rid of these two items. USA airlines are usually just bad.

  10. Now they will probably have to renegotiate the F/A union contract to get them to actually hand them out.

  14. So @SFO/EWR’s latest gripe is that this amenity is provided.
    If the items are so irritating ask the FA to remove them. You can be sure that there will be someone who will gladly use them to improve their comfort.

  15. GREAT NEWS! Really makes things feel way more premium. Wish they would fully bring them back to domestic first, but this is a great step in the right direction!

  16. Better meals and fresh baked cookies for desert would be most welcomed. And not the US-airways prepackaged ones – the ones that they actually baked on board and not just heated up.

  17. United Fairbanks to Denver red eye. No pillow or blankets for first class passengers. Leave at midnight, arrive at 7 am.

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