Stuck In First Class: American Airlines ‘Reclining Disaster’ Maintenance Fail Puts Passenger in Unescapable Tight Spot

by Gary Leff

A first class passenger flying American Airlines from Dallas to Grand Rapids, Michigan on Sunday had a surprise – the person sitting in front of them in seat 2C had an extra special premium seat. The seat reclined more than most first class. And American didn’t even charge them extra! Some might say the seat was “broken” but I prefer to think of it as “angled flat.”

American’s social media team promised to ‘get this over to maintenance’ but, of course, whatever maintenance actually does is a different matter entirely.

In fact aircraft N107US, a 25 year old plane first delivered to US Airways before that airline was taken over by America West, continued flying.

Last year I called for the retirement of the ‘basket of deplorables’ Airbus A320 fleet but American says they no longer have plans to do so this decade “because we have a really young fleet because of that massive fleet renewal program.”

American Airlines retired its Embraer E-195s, Boeing 757s and 767s, and Airbus A330s during the pandemic, and its MD80s right before that. Many of those planes still had great utility. They chose to keep these rickety interior planes instead. They lack even new interiors since the 2013 merger (they did get new seat covers).

Whenever I’ve flagged photos like these from Airbus A320 first class cabins, the response I’ve gotten has been ‘well passengers wouldn’t want us to delay their flights to fix these seats’ – but that begs the questions, (1) why is it always the A320s? (2) What are they doing – or not doing – when the planes aren’t flying to maintain the interiors so that this doesn’t happen so frequently?

This fleet of around 48 planes continues to operate. Many of them date to the 90s, from America West Airlines and from US Airways prior to being taken over by America West. The newest one is around 18 years old.

The problem, of course, is more with the airline’s own decision-making processes than the planes themselves. There are plenty of thirty year old aircraft even flying around in great condition and with updated interiors. At the same time, I wrote about a 2015 Airbus A321 that flew around for weeks with a missing back to a first class seat providing the passenger in the row behind it with an ottoman.

When there are first class seats out of service, passengers also miss upgrades. On sold out flights, American has to deny passengers boarding. It’s not just the bad aesthetic experience, they become an airline that can’t provide the transportation they’ve sold.

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 »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. Well. Safety is most important. I hope the person with the broken seat immediately returned the seat to the full upright position and both those seats put out of order. No one wants to miss upgrades. From a business standpoint retrofitting is extremely costly. Comes back to safety and passenger service recovery. Hopefully the passengers are compensated

  3. It’s consistent with AA practice. Have you “experienced” the latest “cuisine” in First Class?

  7. Safety and maintenance with AA it sucks.
    I am a 1 mill miler (almost 2 mill miler) so have I a long list of stories proving that maintenance and safety in AA it just stinks. Being at the gate, the captain came presenting apologies because we might be delayed like 2 hrs because of mechanical problems, but -according to him – “safety 1st” . So in a very polite manner I asked: Captain, if safety is a real concern for AA these soooo usual delays because of mechanical problems wouldn’t exist. In fact it NEVER, ever, happened to me flying Singapore Airlines or Qatar. He did not answered, he just turned around and went back to three aircraft. it is very simple indeed: They sell much more than the capability of personnel and equipment they have. No chance for proper maintenance.

  8. When UsAiir and AA merged USA took over management and always wanted Airbus products although AA was a big Boeing operation. They continue that Bias and although they do buy Boeing s they keep thaose old Airbus around. In any event, this once great airline has become the worst US Flag carrier…you are lucky got any plane and one with crew who didn’t time out just before closing the doors.

  9. How much of this laissez-faire attitude is the fault of the maintenance crews? The clean-up crews seldom do more beyond emptying seat pockets of trash. (Yet I still find garbage even in biz class.) They have strong unions and not much incentive to give a hoot.

    Aren’t there To Do lists for equipment inspection at the end of each flight that should be followed and checked and any issues reported?

  10. The big question is was the individual reclined polite enough to put the seat back up after it was identified as an issue. My guess…NO

  11. AA should have compensated (give a voucher for 1st class on another flight) this passenger. Probably won’t, BUT SHOULD.

Comments are closed.