New American Airlines Suites Will Fix A Big Mistake From Current Business Class

by Gary Leff on April 17, 2024

When American Airlines rolled out their ‘Concept D’ business class seat with the Boeing 787-8 and installed them on some Boeing 777-200s there were several problems. Some of the seats weren’t mounted to the floor well and passengers in one center seat could cause movement in another. In addition the dividers between the center seats would get stuck in the up or the down position.

These are the ‘forward and rear-facing fully flat seats’ American was buying from Zodiac.

American locked the center seat dividers in place. If they’re up, they’re up and passengers traveling together couldn’t see each other. If they’re down passengers in center seats lack privacy.

When the airline switched seat providers and began installing ‘Super Diamond’ seats in their Boeing 787-9 aircraft and the rest of their 777-200s, they decided not to offer dividers at all for middle seats. Business class passengers traveling solo and stuck in middle seats just wouldn’t have privacy from their neighbor.

Here’s the Super Diamond seat on a Boeing 787-9. The center seats have no divider between them.

This is especially problematic for women. Several female readers have told me that lacking a sense of privacy from their neighbor while sleeping.

The new Boeing 787-8s American has received don’t have exactly the same interiors as the planes that they began taking delivery of in 2015. They added dividers between business class center seats, and put different seats into coach. They’re manual dividers, not electronic, but do the trick.

The great news is that the American’s new walkthrough video of their new cabin product shows the divider is back on the new delivery Boeing 787-9s as well. So the old ones won’t have them, but those with the new suites will.

It would have been… odd… to put in doors for privacy, but not offer privacy from the passenger sitting in the seat beside you.

This symbolizes a larger issue, I think, about the new cabin product. There’s a greater attention to detail. The Super Diamond seat was rushed, and the decision to remove center dividers was about serving the airline’s own operational ease rather than serving the customer.

While I personally think that the current United Airlines and British Airways business cabins are overall aesthetically more pleasing, not to mention KLM’s and Air France’s latest cabins, there’s much greater attention to design in business class seat stitching. I see a nice lamp at each business class seat – much nicer than a snake light. The Flagship logo at the back of the cabin, too, is nice.

Credit: American Airlines

There’s really nothing that can be done with the MiQ premium economy seat. That’s just a pedestrian product no matter who installs it, and each seat needs enough space to offer footrests, not just foot bars protruding from the seat in front.

The large seat back entertainment screen and American Airlines logo embroidered into the seat even in coach is a nice touch, combined with the airline refreshing economy class bedding.

Within the confines of what American Airlines is going to be willing to do – space on the aircraft comes at an incredible premium, so I while I wish the space for midflight snacks was larger I accept certain tradeoffs – they’ve clearly gone much further in working on the details of this product.

Of course I haven’t seen it in person yet. The first plane hasn’t been delivered, and we’re a couple of months until the first Boeing 777-300ER goes in for retrofit to create a model for future work. But the imagery that’s coming out is exceeding my expectations.

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