Frequent air travelers have some common expectations for ease of travel and comfort during the flying experience.
But American Airlines (AAL) – Get Free Report continues to engage in a project that has arguably been cramping these hopes for a few years.
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At the heart of the situation is a new development in an ongoing American Airlines plan to standardize seating arrangements across its fleet of aircraft.
With the project name Oasis, the carrier continues its goal of creating consistency in its seat configurations to cut costs by making it easier to schedule and swap aircraft as operational issues arise.
Back in 2021, one aspect of the Oasis project involved configuring its Boeing (BA) – Get Free Report 737 aircraft.
“For the uninitiated, when US Airways management took over American Airlines, the carrier’s Boeing 737s had 150 seats,” wrote Gary Leff in View From the Wing. “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,” he continued. “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.”
An American Airlines airplane is seen in flight. A new seat configuration is planned for a number of the carrier’s Airbus A319 aircraft.
Shutterstock
Now, Oasis meets the Airbus A319 fleet
American Airlines is now reportedly introducing a similar treatment to some of its smallest mainline jets.
Aviation expert and X, formerly Twitter, user JonNYC wrote about the development on Jan. 31.
AA: so the 32 legacy AA A319s are getting Oasis’d and there are rumors about the configuration. One part says the will get the “space flex” (or cabin-flex — whatever it’s called) lavs that go in the back in the galley area.
Some other parts of this, still working on that— 🇺🇦 JonNYC 🇺🇦 (@xJonNYC) January 31, 2024
The changes are reportedly coming to the Airbus A319s that were already a part of American Airlines before its merger with US Airways in 2013.
There are likely to be a couple of big developments when the project is complete. According to Leff, the A319s will:
- “Be changed over to the new standard ‘Oasis’ product which means taking out seat back TVs and adding bigger overhead bins.”
- “Get an extra row of seats in order to add first class. They will go to 12 first class seats while keeping 120 seats in economy.”
The changes will affect legroom
When the Oasis changes are implemented, the new configuration will decrease the amount of room for all the rows of seats.
“This means squeezing the cabin for extra inches to stick another row of seats into an aircraft that’s already densely configured,” Leff wrote. “There are only 3 rows at the front of the plane, for instance, that are considered ‘Main Cabin Extra’ extra legroom seats.”
“They’ll be getting some of those inches with a smaller lavatory, but that doesn’t get them what they need and that means inches will need to be squeezed from the rest of the (seats in the) cabin,” he added. “Expect less legroom than today on this aircraft both for first class seats and for seats in economy.”
The matter of when these changes will be fully implemented is not clear.
“American has been planning to add more first class seats to sell for over two years,” Leff wrote. “However, they needed to complete retrofits of their Airbus A321s to the new cabin standard before turning their attention to this plane. And they’ll be getting more A321s for reconfiguration from Alaska Airlines. Soon, though, these A319s will lose seat back TVs, legroom, and even get squeezed at the lav.”
At the time of publication, American Airlines had not responded to a request for comment.
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