American Airlines is adding seat back tv screens to their domestic fleet. They’re adding more first class seats. And they’re adding more extra legroom coach seats, too. I’ve been telling you that TV screens at seats on domestic planes were coming.
According to Chief Customer Officer Heather Garboden,
“We’re making one of the most significant investments in the onboard experience in our history. From next-generation seatback entertainment at every seat to substantially more premium seating options, these enhancements will give our customers more ways to relax, stay connected and enjoy their journey.
Putting TVs Back At Seats
American Airlines will be retrofitting much of its fleet. They’ve announced “More storage, redesigned seats and enhanced lighting will have customers flying in comfort and style.”
And they’re putting in TVs “as quickly as possible” though “full fleet installation” isn’t “expected to be complete [until] early next decade.”
- Seatback screens will go on all new Airbus and Boeing deliveries starting in 2028
- They’ll be retrofitting aircraft as well, starting in 2028
- And of course their long haul aircraft already have screens
The set will offer “stunning picture quality, seamless connectivity and will enable new personalized content for a premium customer experience.” I’d expect personalization to also enable ad targeting for better monetization, which is something that Delta and United are working towards.
Screens will be 4K and “among the largest displays offered on narrowbody aircraft in North America” and they’re promising expanded content, personalized recommendations, fast USB-C charging, bluetooth audio, and better flight maps. American isn’t commenting yet on what more storage means, or details of redesigned seats.
This is a huge reversal for the airline. In 2017, American began removing TVs from domestic narrowbody aircraft. They said at the time that nearly everyone had their own devices (phones) though of course kids didn’t, not every family had one per child, and watching shows on a phone isn’t the same experience. People also like to multitask!
While American called their cabin without screens, but with satellite wifi, the “living room experience” passengers saw the seats as antiquated. New aircraft look old, while five years ago American’s then-Chief Customer Officer derided United’s commitment to add seatback screens as ‘prettying up old planes’. It turns out that works.
When American made the decision to eliminate seat back entertainment from their planes a decade ago, those systems were much more expensive. They had to be wired at every seat. Now content can be streamed wirelessly inside the cabin, and costs have dropped by at least two-thirds. Delta, United, and JetBlue are all committed to screens. American looked like an outlier, alongside Southwest.
In 2019 there was a move at American to bring back screens because even then the decision to remove them was seen as a mistake. That got squashed. The airline hadn’t fully realized it had a revenue problem more than a cost problem yet.
This decision brings them full circle, returning to the kind of customer experience that passengers get excited about, and giving something not just to the front of the plane. Most of their customers fly coach and will get not just screens but also about half their fleet will get Starlink wifi as well.
Not every plane will get screens, and this will take quite some time. An airline spokesperson tells me,
We have 100 A319s and the A320 fleet along with additional narrowbody aircraft that will be retired in the coming years that will not be retrofitted with screens. We expect new aircraft to deliver starting in the second half of 2028 while retrofit installation will begin in late 2028.
I assume that ‘additional narrowbody aircraft’ includes, for instance, their ‘block one’ 737s that were delivered around the start of the millenium. It’s two years before we’ll see the beginning of this effort, but it’s something good to look forward to for many passengers. I’ll still mostly ignore the inflight entertainment and work, just setting the seatback screen to the moving map!
American Hasn’t Had Enough Premium Seats. They’re Fixing That.
American says that “premium seating” which includes extra legroom coach, premium economy, and business class represents 25% of seats on narrowbody flights today and they’re growing that to 40%.
Their new Airbus A321XLRs are premium-heavy. They’re adding a row of first class to their Airbus A319s and A320s. Their widebodies are getting more premium seats, too. Now, though, they’ve announced:
- The Boeing 737 MAX 10s they have on order will get 24 first class seats. That’s what Delta is doing with theirs (Delta just shared it last week, but JonNYC leaked it last September).
- They’ll reconfigure Airbus A321neos to add more first class. I assume it will be one additional row, so that those also have 24. A spokesperson tells me,
We are still working through details on the A321neo retrofits. The retrofit installation will begin in late 2028 and are expected to be completed in the early 2030s.
- The majority of narrowbody aircraft will be retrofit with more extra legroom Main Cabin Extra.
Main Cabin Extra may be the biggest part of this announcement, and it’s been the biggest gap with competitors. It’s something American had been removing for years. Often American Airlines just hasn’t been an option for my family to purchase. Exit rows are out with young children, and on many planes that left just two rows of seats.
American Airlines has had a ‘LOPA problem.’ US Airways management started pulling premium seats out of planes, starting in 2015. Ironically, that’s when Delta says customer behavior started to change with a willingness to spend more money for a better experience.
The airline was focused on competing with low cost carriers, on costs rather than revenue. They removed business class seats from 777s and their Boeing 787-8s have just 20 seats up front.
When American rolled out its ‘Oasis’ domestic product, where they removed seat back entertainment screens, and squeezed seats closer together to cram in more seats, they had planned even less legroom in coach. 29-inch pitch generated such an uproar among employees even that they backed off that plan – but they didn’t pull seats out, they spaced them differently. They gave up extra legroom coach.
The problem with that was that while the airline had fares in place to try to get customers to ‘buy up’ they didn’t really have a product to buy up into. They didn’t offer something better between coach and first class, and even first class was getting less legroom and the elimination of TVs (and, at the time, poorly thought-through underseat storage).
Adding Main Cabin Extra extra legroom seats, like United has, gives them a better product to:
- give customers something to spend more money for
- reward their most profitable customers who spend on Citibank credit card products and earn status
One of the challenges is that status is a strong motivator of purchase behavior, but without enough first class seats and without much between standard coach and first class there’s been limited benefit to that status. That hurts repeat purchase behavor, credit card acquisition and spend volume – and that’s all high margin.
The airline isn’t commenting yet on how many additional Main Cabin Extra seats will be added to each aircraft type, or what that will mean to legroom or seat count on those aircraft.
American Airlines Is Reversing Its Decade Of Mistakes
American Airlines Group employs 130,000 people. Planes are purchased years in advance. Virtually everything they do involves working with and getting approval from government at various levels. That means they’re in a slow-moving industry.
Still, they’ve done a tremendous amount in 18 months. I’m genuinely surprised by the progress along a number of different fronts.
Ever since US Airways management from Tempe moved into Dallas, American missed the direction the industry was moving. They focused on competing with Spirit and Frontier after those carriers had peaked. They missed that credit card spend on the East and West Coasts (and Chicago) would be key drivers of profit. They missed that long haul would matter, retiring the planes capable of doing it. They didn’t have premium seats or a premium product right as customers were willing to spend for those things.
In other words, American was putting out a different product than what customers wanted to buy, they alienated their best customers and failed to earn a revenue premium for their product which doesn’t work at an airline that has high costs.
But they finally realized that, and first talked to employees about it in January 2025. Now, they’re investing in lounges with more business class lounges, more Admirals Clubs, and better food. They’re investing in airports like Charlotte, Dallas and LAX. They’re improving the onboard amenities.
American’s new cabins are attractive. Their new business class seats are good, though the A321XLR has kinks. They’re improving their app (but they aren’t close to competitors here), their policies (though there’s a way to go) and their disruption handling, even holding planes for passengers which was a red line under previous management they’d never cross. They’ve actually done three quarters of what I dared hope for three years ago and many things I assumed would be beyond the pale for them.
Not everything is great. The lowest fares no longer earn miles or recognize status. Checked bag fees have gone up. They still need more widebody aircraft to allow them to serve the destinations their customres want to fly to. But it’s really exciting to see the way they have fight in them still.
Now they need to communicate the exciting message of what they’re trying to accomplish, not just to their customers but also to their employees, and motivate employees to deliver the experience they’re investing in to make possible.
Score! About freaking time. IFE/AVOD is far superior to BYOD. More MCE is welcome! @Peter!!
this simply highlights that AA recognizes it was led by people that did not understand what mattered even as recently as a couple years ago but that it will take enormous amounts of money and time to fix those mistakes.
Agreed, @Tim Dunn. American (and United) are finally catching up to Delta and jetBlue on offering IFE/AVOD and complimentary WiFi on most aircraft. For folks that don’t think this is a big deal, they’re welcome to fly Alaska, Allegiant, Breeze, Frontier, Southwest, which still don’t have, either.
Really worried leg room for regular seats will decrease and first class will be 33 inch.
@1990 – Southwest *does* have complimentary wifi, it’s just unusable on most of their aircraft (basically, all except for ~ half their MAX 8 fleet) until they get Starlink done, and they say completion could come faster for them than at United, we’ll see!
agreed, 1990.
there will be a perceived service divide in the industry.
the majority of people on domestic flights less than 3 hours – the majority of US carrier flights – do use AVOD but many do it only for flight tracking.
it becomes a much more significant amenity on mid continent to coast or transcons
AVOD is not the make or break amenity that some people make it out to be but it is a perception of quality that a carrier that wants to be considered premium has to have.
is AA even through ripping out AVOD on its 319s or whatever fleet had them earlier?
the backflip is what is hard to fathom
So, another airline that insists on sticking advertising in passenger’s faces for the duration of the flight. Because this is absolutely what In-Flight “Entertainment” is about.
The real test is whether or not it respects the passenger by staying turned off when turned off.
@Tim Dunn “is AA even through ripping out AVOD on its 319s or whatever fleet had them earlier?”
I think they have 2 or 3 LAA A319s left. The A321Ts are narrowbodies that still have AVOD and have been slated to go to the domestic A321 standard without screens.
The phrase “Earrings on a Pig” comes to mind.
It sounds like AA is finally taking my advice. I’ve recommended that they learn from Seinfeld- specifically the episode called “The Opposite” where George finds by doing things the opposite of how he normally does things leads him to much success. Congratulations to AA for learning how to avoid their typical instincts.
Yep @1990 – it’s about time. Agree with @TD – AVOD is about perception of quality, although the AVOD of the 2030s will be 100% about targeted advertising. So, as always, careful what you wish for, especially if all you really want is to look at a moving map. Starlink + FlightAware works just fine for that!
As for MCE… it’s a shame the XLR is actually *not* premium-oriented because it has virtually no MCE to reward its most premium customers with (other than 12 exit row seats – and note that Delta does not sell exit row seats as MCE… and there’s a good reason for that!) and literally just announced a policy where its most premium customers will now likely not get upgraded. The business class seat on the XLR is very good though, but there’s only 20 of them versus 30 F/J on the 321T. PE is good and all, but it’s not a lie-flat seat, so the XLR has a net reduction of 6 lie-flat seats in an era of high-J cabins.
End of the day, this is a big step in the right direction and signals that the Pieper / Garboden era may more formally be upon us soon (will be hilarious for Isom to try and take credit for this u-turn…) , but wake us all up in 2029-2031 by the time anyone actually starts to see any of these changes.
Good morning, America (pun not intended).
I specifically avoid flying with AA domestically when traveling with family unless I can get the 787s specifically because of this issue.
It’s about time! Parker (Former CEO) and the USAIR team destroyed American Airlines. I hope AA can once again return to the great airline before the arrival of “Team Tempe”.
Nat Pieper needs to be the next AA CEO ASAP! No more of the same crew that’s been rotating deck chairs for the past decade plus.
Happen to be on a Delta domestic flight at the moment. Wifi is slow, but operable. I did a quick look around and only about half the passengers I can see are using the seatback screens. I turned mine off the moment I sat down. I may be in the minority but I always travel with my own device (no ads!) and appreciate having a device holder.
Great, more stuff that will break and won’t be fixed on AA aircraft.
Ah yes bringing back the 8 track player, cassette player, and CD. I will still use my own device. Colossal waste of money. Then again AA does not lead, they follow.
I remember when Usair started ripping out entertainment and charging $2 for a coke.
@Coffee – it’s not a waste of money, it’s designed to make money. They will have built a data-driven profile on you, connect you to the screen you are staring at (Hi Coffee! Press Yes to Confirm It’s You and Get Started!), and start to push targeted ads to the screen you are staring at for hours that they can monetize. Suddenly the screen will not be able to be turned off for the first 15 minutes of the flight because, uh, “the safety demonstration needs to be played and we want to keep the screens on for 10 minutes after it ends so that folks really think about that important safety messaging… brought to you by AT&T and Car Company X and Hyatt and Targeted Companies Y Z and A”.
“this simply highlights that AA recognizes it was led by people that did not understand what mattered”
@TD, I don’t even disagree with your premise except that the same people who chose to rip out Seatback screens the instant Scott Kirby shut his door at AA are the exact same ones using seatback screen installation as a farce to distract Wall Street and the BoD from their failures as an AA leadership team. They’ve wasted a LOT of shareholder money ripping out the screen and now putting them back in.
Nat Pieper is the only new person in the room. Everyone else, including Heather Garboden, eagerly advocated to rip PTVs off the aircraft as a cost measure.
Useless if can’t get me there on time like last 6 flights
@Gary Leff — If WN does technically have ‘free WiFi,’ but it’s a toss-up as to whether your aircraft will have it (working), that’s not a great, consistent feeling. Like, I wouldn’t expect it, then… last-minute aircraft swap… 737-700, uh oh (at least its got those ‘scimitars’!)
@Adam L — ‘Slow’ is still better than ‘no.’
@Orson Johnson — Oh duh-duh-dear, that’s the prettiest lil’ piggy around!
@Peter — That is possible (forced advertising as another revenue stream).
@Coffee Please — You sound like a sore winner…
Seems to me the MCE implementation could be done much earlier, before “new parts” are ready for the rest of the cabin upgrades. Have you confirmed we won’t see expanded MCE before late 2028?
@Jason You have to factor in aircraft D-check schedule to implement MCE and AVOD upgrades. It’s not just when parts are available.
DWI Doug, Kirby, and BOD should have their AA FC benefits clawed back for the amount of destruction they’ve caused with their dumb decisions in 2010s.
Now you’ll probably whine that American isn’t doing enough to reduce its debt. There’s always something for critics to whine and moan about.
AA says “welcome to 1994” bringing you the latest and best in sky high entertainment. The mental midgets who ordered them to rip out the screens they already had installed should be tarred and feathered. Race to the bottom of the heap? American Airlines says “hold my beer”
@DesertGhost – American made real blunders that put them in this debt spot to begin with, both borrowing $12.5 billion for stock buybacks and strategic decisions like commoditization that undermined its revenue potential. Their balance sheet and stock price make it hard to do deals that could improve the business, and interest expense is eating too much of today’s return.
However, no, they shouldn’t be aggressively paying down debt at the exclusion of acquiring widebody jets, impproving cabins, and delivering airport investments including lounges. They need to invest in the business for long-term profit and maximizing the value of the business.
Those mistakes are hamstrings today to some extent but they don’t change what needs to be done now, and I’m thrilled to see American doing many of those things. They do need to better communicate changes – from the top – and motivate employees to deliver for customers.
Gary, American Airlines should have reached out, hired you, and taken your advice years ago . Your analysis has been spot on for a long time, and having your involvement in setting strategy would have helped the airline immeasurably.
max
it is hard to accept that Scott Kirby wasn’t behind a lot of AA’s strategies to cheapen the passenger experience.
He has said he learns and I suspect that he realized what didn’t work at AA and applied them to UA but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a part of the mistakes AA made.
Gary,
AA simply does not have the financial resources to do all that you say they need to do. They are undoubtedly committing to these huge changes because they are seeing positive financial signs from the things they are doing.
keep in mind alot of the seats on AA’s aircraft probably do not support AVOD so they could very well have to replace the entire seat or major parts of it in order to add AVOD.
@Tim Dunn – I would be more inclined to agree with you had AA not just hired John Bendoraitis. This is a guy who spent nearly the past two decades at Spirit and Frontier figuring out how to charge passengers for the aspiration of comfort. Now he’s supposed to transform AA into something more premium? That’s like hiring a demolition expert to restore historic architecture. “Yes, I know my last four jobs were all about seeing how many people I could cram into an airplane while nickle and diming them half to death, but trust me… I suddenly understand champagne, catering, premium service attributes, and what makes a great lie-flat business class product.” Sorry, but I am less optimistic even in the face of this seat back entertainment decision. I also agree with @Robert that a large percentage of the screens will likely be broken most of the time.
Waste of $$ for screens. Not only nthe cost to install but extra weight adds gas and we pay for it. Byod and give an outlet for charging.
The real news here is the premium seating expansion. That’s where they’ve left money on the table. Just wish the retrofits were on a more aggressive timeline – Isom – no embarrassment in taking a harder look into how to accelerate them. In fact that may be optically better.
So idiotic. These people had no idea what consumers wanted. At least they’re admitting it now.
I just choose a carrier for a 21 hour flight on one factor . . . Starlink (and good IFE).
Ah here is our fAAnboy at it again.
Our fAAnboy beat on Delta because Delta’s Amazon Leo doesn’t start getting installed until 2028.
But it’s wonderful that his fAAvorite AAirline is going to start installing IFE and more premium seats. Also in 2028.
American Airlines will be a better Airline once they get rid of all the America West people
@DesertGhost — Now’s your chance to use your ‘one-liner’… ‘and you’ve been CEO of…’
@JOJO – And let’s not forget the entire current Board of Directors.
Mike Hunt,
Bend over itis or whatever his name is won’t be responsible for passenger experience decisions although he will have to execute on these decisions regarding more premium seats and AVOD installation but I suspect these decisions were made well before he had a chance to weight in.
I think alot of people underestimate the size of the mountain that AA has to climb to just get to parity w/ DL in product standards – which is AA’s most direct competitor due to their eastern US overlap. DL isn’t standing still but AA is making signficant moves to close the gap; again, UA still has far more mainline aircraft that don’t have AVOD than DL which is notable because the 717s – which function as much as large RJs – won’t ever get AVOD – and will probably be retired before UA gets even half of its mainline fleet converted to AVOD.
but AA is likely to continue to just skim above the surface financially and that also is the result of decisions that were made 15+ years ago and will likely be even harder to overcome than product issues.
WN will move closer to a full legacy model but I doubt if they will invest in AVOD but we could all be surprised.
among legacies, AS is going to be the outsider
Will the 737-800s get more FC seats?
Off point, but snyway. AA is talking of getting rid of the 319s (132 pax) and 320s (150) in upcoming years. The smallest planes in terms of seats, other that those few 321xlrs at155 pax, are the 321 (196) and the MAX10 (?185?+/-). They got all ordered MAX8s (172). What happens when the option to fly a 132 sear 319 goes away and your next choice is 40 more? Is there nothing planned for a sub 170 non-RJ?
I have said this before; I am grateful not to live in an AA hub. I strongly dislike AA after 4 incredibly rude, lazy and arrogant crews that I encountered 7 years ago.
I am glad that AA is installing screens again and trying to improve it’s product. It is mind blowing to me how out of touch AA is with its competition.
I fly Alaska a lot and do not mind my own device at all because AS WiFi is great. It’s crews and meals are excellent as well.
Having said that, AA cannot compete with DL or UA without these improvements. Unless of course one is based in DFW, CLT, PHL or MIA.
@tim dunn: You haven’t been on top of the United Fleet Tracker site. The AVOD conversion is much further along than you let on.
How much of this will come at the expense of the majority of us sitting in the back? Saying that there will be four extra rows of seats up front but the total seat count will remain the same tells me that the agony of economy will impressively get even worse. That’s the diametrical opposite of what needs to happen.