American Airlines is launching business class suites with doors on new Boeing 787-9s that they take delivery of. They’re also retrofitting Boeing 777-300ERs, removing first class and adding these new suites.
That retrofit plan is called Project Olympus. Bulkhead business class will have extra space, and will be treated to elevated amenities.
Credit: American Airlines
These Boeing 777-300ERs are getting a lot more seats – and a lot more premium seats – 84 to 114 total premium seats, without losing any coach seats. I will miss having a true first class product on the airline’s flagship aircraft.
Boeing 777-300ER First Class
Current configuration:
8 first class52 business class24 premium economy216 coach
New configuration:
70 business class44 premium economy216 coach
Credit: American Airlines
That’s an increase of 30 seats, all in business and premium economy which means seats that take up more room. And all they’re giving up is 8 first class seats to get that. In order to do this, it means that current seats have to be squeezed.
Aviation watchdog JonNYC expects the aircraft to lose one lavatory, and to reduce the amount of space each business class and Main Cabin Extra (extra legroom coach) seat gets by one inch.
On this, I’d speculate:business class goes from 43″ to 42″ pitch (entirely new seat-type so doesn’t mean anything I don’t think), MCE goes from 35″ to 34″, one less lav
Then, the lav in front of the L1 door becomes two lavs maybe, lots of optimization of existing space to..
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) August 23, 2024
I had heard the same thing about reduced premium seat pitch, and American Airlines declined to disabuse me of that understanding.
I’m excited to see the new business class product. Even with one less inch, these new Adient Ascent seats should be excellent. And having more premium seats should ultimately be good for award and upgrade space, too. I do not like squeezing extra legroom coach, however. They’ve already done that on their domestic narrowbody fleet and those seats don’t really seem better than Southwest’s anymore. However one less inch in Main Cabin Extra would still be competitive with similar offerings from United and Delta.