Brett Snyder, the Cranky Flier flew American Airlines from Puerto Vallarta to Los Angeles and declared “no complaints whatsoever” about the new American Airlines ‘Oasis’ interior. I find Cranky Flier to be a must-read but in this case I say his standards are too low.
This was my very first experience on an Oasis-configured 737. That’s the one with 172 seats that had people ranting and raving about how horrible it was. I had no complaints whatsoever…
Legroom on these seats was about what I’d expect in any regular coach seat… Just know that if you’re flying in coach on American 737s, the new Oasis-configuration is great.
For the uninitiated, when US Airways management took over American Airlines, the carrier’s Boeing 737s had 150 seats. That was quickly bumped up to 160, and then a new interior was rolled out with 172 seats. All 737s the airline is continuing to operate get this new interior.
To cram in more seats the airline had to reduce the space each passenger gets. That’s true not just in coach but first class, too. They’ve added bigger overhead bins, and smaller lavatories. They removed seat back entertainment screens. And in order to accomplish the ‘densification’ project they use seats with less padding so that the seats take up less space.
The Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations
The famous phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations” is credited to George W. Bush when he was campaigning for President in 2000, in a speech to the NAACP (though it was written by speechwriter Michael Gerson). And it’s taken on greater significance since then, in matters both big and small. It sure seems apt when thinking about Brett’s review of American’s Oasis domestic interiors.
To be sure the new standard domestic product isn’t bad in an historical sense. Louis C.K. reminds us that you’re sitting in a chair in the sky. Compared to what travel used to entail, Oasis isn’t a hardship: “New York to California in five hours? That used to take 30 years. And a bunch of you would die on the way there.” So let’s be clear, tou’re still “partak[ing] in the miracle of human flight.”
And if that sums up your expectations, absolutely, American’s domestic Oasis product meets those. However,
- You can’t open a laptop and work, the way you can flying Southwest (which American’s CEO refers to as “the cattle car”.
- The seats are hard as a rock.
- Not everyone cares about seat back entertainment, but it’s still a nice to have, Delta is committed to it, and United is adding it to older aircraft. Watching something on a phone isn’t the same as on a seat back screen, not everyone has enough personal devices for the family (especially with kids!), and if you’re watching something on your personal device that makes it tough to multitask and turn flight time into productive time.
- There are no galley ovens in coach, which means no hot meals on 3000 mile domestic flights or some South America routes.
Cranky flew Los Angeles – Puerto Vallarta which is about the limit of my toleration, however American flies this seat on much longer missions. The hard chair with less padding begins to take its toll at two to three hours.
From a design and cabin feel perspective he offers that “it looked good on the inside thanks to the Boeing Sky Interior” but it should be noted that while Airbus A321neos are delivered from the factory with mood lighting, they’re rolling out the standard domestic reconfiguration to existing Airbus narrowbody planes and an airline spokesperson confirms to me, “retrofitted A321s are upgraded to white, non-mood LED lighting.”
Airbus A321neo interior, credit: American Airlines
Customers Can Do Much Better
If the question is merely, ‘can we deal with Oasis on a 1200 mile flight?’ then ok sure. But the airline business is competitive, and customers can do so much better. That’s why the product is such a blunder.
Delta offers screens. United reportedly is adding them to older aircraft that do not have them, an idea that American executives mock. Southwest’s standard seat gives two inches more space than American’s. So on a competitive itinerary, American’s product often isn’t.
This New Interior Lacks Enough Extra Legroom Coach Seats
Outside of the exit rows, American’s Boeing 737-800s and 737 MAXs have just three rows of Main Cabin Extra seats with additional legroom. One of those rows is the bulkhead, though there isn’t even a real partition between first and economy on this plane.
That makes Main Cabin Extra seats tough to get if you’re booking within a couple of weeks of travel, especially if you don’t want a middle seat or need two seats together. It’s tough to escape ‘regular coach’ if you have status or are willing to pay.
Notably though even Main Cabin Extra has less space than before, but the 3 extra inches matter even more when the rest of coach is worse.
First Class Suffers, Too
Oasis wasn’t a redesign based on the assumption that people in back just care about a cheap ticket and will take whatever experience they’re offered, the densification and degraded passenger experience extends to the premium cabin as well.
Cranky acknowledges “[f]irst Class may be a different story, but I can’t speak to that.” First class on the aircraft was so bad that after retrofitting planes they have to re-retrofit them again to correct design defects.
American’s “Project Kodiak” may be giving first class passengers under seat storage back (something taken away by Oasis), but it’s still a hard seat and a tight fit. The airline’s older Boeing 737-800s had 40 inches from seat back to seat back, this product isn’t just about tight seating in coach it takes 4 inches away from first class too.
Oasis Is Bad Business For An Airline That Needs To Earn A Revenue Premium
There’s no question that Cranky Flier is right, American Airlines offers a product that will get you from point A to point B and there are worse discomforts. There’s more space between seats than on Spirit Airlines, though of course Spirit offers ‘The Big Front Seat’ super cheap and that is a more comfortable experience.
However American’s new domestic coach product is worse than Delta’s. It’s worse than JetBlue’s. It’s worse than Southwest’s. The customer experience of this product wasn’t a priority. The airline didn’t bother building a cabin mockup before declaring this their standard product and rolling it out. Airline CEO Doug Parker didn’t even try it himself before the decision was made – or even until it was flying for six months.
American Airlines has higher costs than competitors and more debt. It can’t just do ‘as well’ as other airlines, relying on operating a lot of flights and earning a proportional share of traffic, filling more cheap seats than before. If it does that it will underperform the industry.
Given American’s cost structure it needs to earn a revenue premium. It needs to be the preferred carrier, that customers will choose even when it’s more expensive. That’s doubly true when domestic flying (and close-in international that receives a domestic product) is almost all the business there is.
Even when international travel recovers, and international business travel recovers, international business class passengers are also domestic flyers. In fact most travelers fly domestically more than they do internationally, and they do most shorter flights in back. Their experience with American forms the impression that will tell them whether the airline’s business class is the one they’d want to fly when it comes down to paying top dollar for long distance comfort – or not.
If I recall right it was the American CEO who maintained that the most important customer for American was the federal government. Kind of implies that pax are not customers, rather a reason to get subsidies from the gum.
What say we get honest and revert to a national flag carrier and charge for it.
Here’s my story about Oasis that surprised me. I flew (LGA-MIA) with my boss about 18 months ago. I was in MCE, he wasn’t. He isn’t a road warrior anymore, but used to be. And he was one of those that the airline execs probably love- flew mostly paid international J, would go to sleep as soon as the plane took off, and was a 100k mi/year flyer but knew very little about the FF program or its benefits. When we got off the plane, he raved about it- he loved the “new plane”, the tablet holders and even went so far as to say he thought the legroom was better. I just kept my mouth shut.
Don’t see a problem in way AA management thinks, give what people want in each class. In coach, price matters the most, so give them that. In long haul business, comfort matters the most, AA gives that in premium class, at the least. I really don’t care about domestic first, even when I am connecting to an INTL flight as long as I get a lie flat on the INTL segment. AA’s hubs are strategically positioned so that I don’t have to really fly more than 3 hours for an INTL connection. Am sure AA will still make money flying oasis, but I hope I am wrong !
How can we tell on seatguru if our reservation is on an oasis plane?
@Gary – you are wrong on one point here. With Kodiak, AA has moved to 2 rows of MCE outside of the exit rows, or 24 seats total. They moved the 3 inches of MCE in row 10 into the first row of F to provide realistic legroom there.
I am avoiding these and the new Southwest 737-800 that have the new thin seats as well.
This is more like “faux-asis” or, better yet, “no-asis”…
@bo
Just cross your fingers and pray you don’t
He’s right. The complaints are way overblown. Small lavs-who cares, it’s an f-ing airplane. No bulkhead wall in Y-that’s a good thing since you get get underseat foot space. Y is on par with other carriers. I don’t give a crap about poor quality screen that often don’t work anyway; tablet holders are nice. F was an issue but is sufficiently addressed within the Kodiak mods. Bigger overhead bins are awesome. Loss of 1 row of MCE is the only real issue.
This is interesting, but I’m not convinced by your argument, Gary. AA is basically aiming to be Spirit with an international route network. They’re NOT competitive at all in the front cabin, but in the back, their products and pricing are probably a better choice than Spirit.
So, if they take a hit on the revenue premium vs DL/UA, but make a premium above Spirit and manage to fill their main cabins, will they earn more overall? I’m not really convinced there’s a clear answer here; we’d probably need to see the books to really know.
Now, does that impact AA’s international business traffic and the premium they earn for long-haul flying? I tend to think that answer probably is “yes” because they’ve hurt the domestic F/J product too much, but that’s an intuition, not anything backed by data. If it does hurt the international premium, I think on net AA’s domestic products couldn’t possibly earn enough premium to be worth that loss.
Yes, like everyone else, I don’t like these enhancements. However, if I’m in economy, then price is king. If AA is materially cheaper ($20 or more?) than more comfortable, equally priced competition, then they’ll get the nod. They also have a built-in price advantage over UA and other LCCs because they allow a free carryon with B/E tickets.
@Ben – that’s correct, there’s even less MCE with Kodiak, that’s a nuance I didn’t get into wanting to give AA the best face on their product when I was criticizing it.
Gary, seems like you are having a total meltdown because Cranky didn’t have a problem with oasis/kodiak, by just repeating and rehashing what you write every other week.
Get over it. I am 6’2 and flown oasis four times on 4 hour segments and was totally fine.
Find something new to write about. Your constant ranting becomes stale.
@bo: For an American 737-800, you can tell if you are on an Oasis plane in two ways: (1) the first-class cabin starts with row 1 and ends with row 4, and (2) coach ends with row 33. On the other hand, for the pre-Oasis planes, the first-class starts with row 3 and ends with row 6, and coach ends with row 30.
I fly often, love being comfortable And I would fly SW exclusively and pay a little more if only they had more no stops from Fort Lauderdale to Philly like they used to. I have so many points but will a list stopovers at all costs.
I fly often, love being comfortable And I would fly SW exclusively and pay a little more if only they had more nonstops from Fort Lauderdale to Philly like they used to. I have so many points but will avoid stopovers at all costs. AA has the flights, but I do not enjoy it. And when can we get cocktails served again, please?
@Ryby
“Gary, seems like you are having a total meltdown ”
Is modern humankind just a race to see who can be the most disingenuous? Calling this a meltdown might qualify as your own meltdown tbh.
American is not substantially different from Delta or United in my experience. The reason seats are crammed into aircraft is price, pure and simple. Most people, in spite of what they write on airline blogs, go for the lowest fare. Airlines have a lot of data about what people really do. not what airline geeks think they do.
Gary:
“For the uninitiated, when US Airways management took over American Airlines, the carrier’s Boeing 737s had 150 seats. That was quickly bumped up to 160”
Not the full story-
Legacy AA had configured the 738 with 160 seats and originally sold all 160 and crewed it with 4 FAs. During the LAA bankruptcy they installed unmoveable tables on 10 middle seats, without reconfiguring the aircraft, capping capacity at 150 seats so that the 738 could be flown with 3 FAs. US Airways management removed the tables and re-added the 4th FA saying that the expense of the 4th FA was justified with record load factors.
With that said, OASIS/KODIAK is a customer unfriendly product and is NOT COMPETITIVE with DL and now UA (never mind B6). The lack of in seat IFE is not what customers want. They want in seat screens AND great wifi- it is *not* one or the other. AA can try to spin this all they want- their domestic interiors are not competitive with DL/UA/B6.
Those seats look awful. Until people start voting with their wallets we will continue to see a race to the bottom.
Two points
1. Brett Snyder (the Cranky Flier) worked at America West and continues to take every opportunity to support America West’s management which now runs American Airlines including pushing American’s press releases.
2. American bought the wrong plane in the 737-800 and 737-MAX8 and is trying to cram the same number of seats that other airlines put in larger aircraft. American should have bought the 737-900/MAX 9 which other airlines have done and their configurations aren’t near as tight.
I actively book 321 over 738 A/C. Thankfully most destinations ex -DFW seem to be 321s
While I hate to agree with AA’s CEO on anything, SOuthwest is “Cattle Car Express”. I only fly in F and AA is not really interested in my business. I have flown them exclusively since 1978 and I will be moving my business to Delta after my flights in February. They no longer care about full fare first class customers, treat us ;like cattle, different level of service on four flights to and from CHM, just terrible treatment. These new seats, well fort premium price, I would expect some padding.
MCE = Middle Class Economy
Gary isn’t happy..because someone liked AA oasis .
Get over it … I had delta flight with back seat screen on but its never worked . I watched the whole movie on my laptop .
AA is clever enough to remove seat back screen . And its works perfect for millions of people. Get over it .
@Allen
Actually, you don’t need to worry about it because there are no non-Oasis 738’s left.
Have to say the new cabins look and sound massively better and more generously committed than the likes of BA’s short and midhaul aircraft…
The global trend is to densified cabins both for the economic and environmental benefits.
Yeah, what Ben wrote. There are five rows of MCE on these planes, not three as claimed by Gary.
As for getting these: Doesn’t AA allow you to choose seats at the time of booking? So as an elite, you should see if you get MCE. Obv, there’s still a risk associated with IRROPS and short-term change of plans, but usually there’s some predictability.
BTW, I’m not even an elite with AA (but with BA). I still get to choose MCE free of charge shortly after booking even in basic economy.
Gary give it a rest with your AA bashing.
I just flew this product on Sunday from Chicago ORD to Washington DCA. I was expecting it to be awful given ALL THE BASHING I’ve seen over the years on this board. It was totally fine. I was able to spread my legs out under the seat in front of me, and there was no noticeable discomfort in the seat. Flight was full. Everybody around me whipped out tablets/ phones/ laptops and watched the entertainment that AA provided on their devices. I was able to plug in my phone and I watched a movie. While it was tight, I still felt comfortable. Would I say the same thing after a DCA-LAX nonstop on this plane? Not sure. But it was fine for this trip, the price was right, and I walked away a totally satisfied customer. Does Delta have a nicer product in economy? Does JetBlue? Sure. But they dont fly the routes I need nonstop so I wont fly them. Also – normally I fly United, but for the date/ time I needed they were 2x the price of American, so I went with AA. And while I think Southwest is fine and have no problem flying them, Midway Airport in Chicago is not convenient for my needs. I walk away from this experience knowing that AA 738, while not luxurious, will meet my needs and it’s something I wont actively avoid.
Oh, and seconding what somebody else wrote – yes. In 2010, AA AA had 160 seats in the 738. It went briefly to 150 during chapter 11 for cost savings, but now they’ve gone back up further. So saying that Legacy AA had 150 seats isn’t really accurate.
AA is Gary’s white whale. Really sad.
When Doug asked American Airlines flight attendants and other employees to lower their standards, they responded, “Up yours.”
People rave about how great Delta is, but they pack more seats in a 321 than AA. I avoid 737’s like the plague, but it’s only because of the narrower cabin/seat width, not because of the seat pitch on the last row of the plane. The last 3 (non wide body) flights, the IFE didn’t work, so good riddance.
AA’s Oasis cabin sucks. The need to reverse it.
UNITED rising
They should more actively market the fact they blow AA and Delta out of the water when it comes to extra legroom seats. Big differentiator for elites.
I don’t know about others on here, but I keep finding F fares on AA for almost the same price of Y fares on DL. As long as that’s the case, AA F still beats a DL Y in comfort.
I live in the Chicago market. I used to fly AA, was Exec Plat at one time. For a number of reasons, I have segued to UA over the past few years (along with WN) and the debut of the Oasis interior has put an exclamation point on that decision for me. Flew one AA flight with this interior (thankfully it was only STL-ORD) and it was torture for me. Sure, you guys who are 5’11” can say it’s all fine and dandy. But I’m 6’5″. UA’s standard economy is usually just enough space (though they have some tighter seats here and there); WN has enough space for me in all their seats. AA’s Oasis seats are DVT waiting to happen. It sucks, it smacks of cheapness, no thanks AA.
Gary,
Are you really doing a review of a trip review because you can’t stand someone didn’t mind a perfectly normal and acceptable aircraft cabin?
Aside from seatback video, oasis is the same plane as every new airbus delivery coming to delta and has more legroom in first class than most of Delta’s narrowbody fleet.
Find a new topic or, at least, be honest in your comparisons.
There’s a reason Gary compares Oasis to the previous AA layout instead of Delta and United: Delta and United already densified their cabins and have the same legroom as AA oasis.
Hate the Oasis lavs? Take a look at Every Delta Airbus narrowbody and you’ll notice they already have the oasis lavs shoved two into the back wall of the plane with a galley shoved in even more to the back wall (yeah, no oven for economy, Gary)
@Julie – you’ll see I do compare AA Y to DL Y in the post and would point out that average pitch is slightly greater on a Delta A321 than an American Oasis plane [since some rows do have 31 inches rather than 30] and of course wider seats too because of the Airbus airframe, and Delta has seat back screens plus historically better reliability.
@Living for the miles appears to be the same person as @Julie, and in any case see the reply above that I do compare American with Delta, United and Southwest in the post – not just old American [although I think that’s an important comparison, Jeff Bezos says the biggest mistake companies make is comparing to competitors rather than focusing on what customers want]. And the focus on this post isn’t the Oasis lavs if you actually read it…
Apparently many people don’t mind the new seats. I & a CK friend both won’t fly that seat on a westbound transcontinental flight. I’m doing SFO next week, broke up the trip in DFW just cause the F seats are so uncomfortable. I can tolerate the red-eye eastbound for 4-1/2 hours, but barely. I would have flown Jetblue if convenient.
AA’s densified first class is probably a good idea long term. I really hate to say it, but if business travel doesn’t return to pre-pandemic levels, having a more dense aircraft and smaller (ie cheaper to sell) first class will turn out to be a good idea.
Right now AA first is quite a bit cheaper than DL, so I’ve got 4 F on AA to the Caribbean in a couple mo. The cost for First on AA vs coach on competitors + fees for bags and extra legroom seats made AA First a no-brainer.
Thing is, if it DOES return to pre-pandemic levels, then not expanding the number of rows for MCE -OR- First is really going to bite them in the ass. If prices are the same (or reasonably close), I’ll pick other carriers every time over AA.
Quite the gamble.
Excellent assessment Gary on the unfriendly Oasis program and AA continuing actions to achieve UULCC status along with a rush to customer service bottom! Keep up the great work regarding ongoing AA reporting! Basically, we have AA with shiny aircraft and inferior passenger service!
People complain too much and not willing to pay more for more. You can’t want first class seats in coach and pay economy prices.
Oasis sucks. The only seats worse than economy Oasis seats are the first class Oasis seats. What idiot thought having no room for a relatively small carry-on bag in the seat in front of you was a good thing in first class. I’m exec platinum and actually hope I don’t get upgraded to first when I’m flying in an Oasis plane
ALL YOU DO 8S BITCH ABOUT AMERICAN AIRLINES!
UNWARRANTED COMPLAINTS!
YOU ARE A PAID INFLUENCER FOR DELTA!
Go fly DELTAS OUTDATED, ANCIENT 717,S FROM AIRTRAN AND OLD 767,757.
AND GET A LIFE!
During a recent trip I was on one of these planes. I liked it. It was comfortable and it had a place for me to put my tablet. However, I also had to fly on a plane where they had tablets on the back of seat. Apparently I pissrd the person. Behind me off and she kept playing on said tablet to the point it gave me a headache. So if I had to choose the Boeing over a plane with an attached tablet, I would choose the Boeing.
So sick and tired of AA bashing! All airlines, in one way or another, view passenger’s cash cows.
What about not having ways to charge your phone or I pad while you use it as a entertainment device. ? I flew From Miami to Boston after 7 pm and my phone was almost dead. I was seating on the main extra seat and guess what. No power. Its a low cost airplane with premium prices