Last Friday I received an invitation from American to an event that would show off the “company’s aircraft modernization plans while onboard an American wide-body jet.” Sounded good, but that event was yesterday and with less than a week’s notice, I couldn’t make time. I was, of course, eagerly awaiting the news. In the end, it wasn’t quite the announcement I would have hoped. The news is good for business class (eventually), but mixed at best (that’s being generous) for coach.

It’s very strange that they brought everyone to Dallas for this event, because while they did hold it on a widebody, it was on an airplane that didn’t have the new product onboard. Why? Because the work to upgrade the seats on the fleet won’t even begin until 2014. Why bother to announce something that’s two years away from even starting? Seems like a show for the bankrupcty court to me. I found it highly amusing that the same day, US Airways put out a release announcing it was done putting flat beds on its A330s. American still hasn’t started.

For the 10 new 777-300ERs being delivered starting this year, there isn’t much news over what has already been leaked out by the airline over the last few months. One thing that still hasn’t been cleared up is whether American will be doing 9 or 10-abreast on the 777s. There were conflicting reports from the event, but looking at the seat counts, it looks like the airline is going with the tighter 3-4-3, 10-abreast configuration on all 777s in coach. But let’s forget about the 777-300ER and instead look at the existing fleet, which was what yesterday’s announcement was really about.

Boeing 777-200 – 47 in the fleet
The current flagship aircraft will be undergoing a fairly dramatic makeover. It looks like it will get the same seats as on the 777-300ER throughout with one big difference. All 47 airplanes will lose First Class and become two-cabin. Hmm, maybe they’ll just take the First Class seats on these planes and plop them on to the 777-300ERs. This means that the only airplanes with true international First Class in the entire American fleet will be those 10 lonely 777-300ERs. That’s a big change for the 47 airplanes that have it today.

Let’s do a little math. The 777-200s today have 16 seats in First and 37 in Business. Those 53 seats will be replaced with “up to” 45 of the new Business Class seats. I would imagine that would take up about same or even a little more floor space even with fewer seats. But the more interesting math is in the back of the bus, where it goes from 190 coach seats to “up to” 45 Main Cabin Extra and “up to” 170 coach seats. I don’t see how that’s in any way possible to net 25 more coach seats unless the airline adds an extra seat in each row. This has to be 10-abreast in a 3-4-3 configuration, unless they’re using “up to” to mean they might back down. But with Main Cabin Extra, American’s version of Economy Plus, at 45 seats, it seems that cabin will be 5 rows of 9-abreast seating no matter what.

If you can sit up there, you’re in much better shape, but it might be tough. American elites and elites on partner airlines will be able to sit there for free, so that’s going to mean a lot of demand. It’s even more pronounced on the 767 as I mention below.

If you do end up in the back, American hopes to make you forget about that by having a bunch of audio/video on demand programming and internet access, just like on the 777-300ER.

Boeing 767-300
The workhorse of the fleet is getting a makeover as well, um, sort of. Well, ok, some the fleet is eventually getting a makeover beginning in a couple years.

There are 58 767-300s in the fleet today and “up to half” will be fixed up and made to look pretty. There will be a flat bed in business with direct aisle access, but I assume it’s not the same seat that will be on the 777s. That seat just doesn’t fit very well into a cabin the width of a 767, so the airline will have to use something else. While this is just my assumption, it seems to be confirmed by the fact that unlike on the 777s, inflight entertainment won’t be in the seat. That’s right; American will continue to distribute tablets for business class travelers as is done today.

In coach, it doesn’t look like things are changing much at all. Today, the 767s have overhead monitors, and I’ve confirmed with American that’s not changing. That’s just weak.

The only change appears to be the addition of a very tiny section of Main Cabin Extra seating on this airplane. By tiny, I mean a mere 14 seats in two rows. Compare this to United which puts more than 50 seats in Economy Plus and Delta with 30 to 40 in Economy Comfort on the same aircraft type and this is not very competitive for all those elites looking for relief.

Why would American do that? Probably because it’s easy. The new 767 configuration will have 167 seats in coach, the same number that currently sit behind the overwing galley and lavs. There are four rows of coach in front of that galley which will apparently become two rows of Main Cabin Extra (and will likely lose some space thanks to the new biz configuration). So it will be very nice up there if you can find a way to get a seat. Competition is going to be very tough to get one of those and there are going to be some seriously unhappy elites.

The way I look at this is that American is doing the bare minimum it can get away with on the 767 until it retires those airplanes. The problem is that apparently the first won’t be retired until “2015(ish)”. Who knows how long it will take for there to be no airplanes left with the old seats. It could be years and years.

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None of the timing issues of this whole thing will stop American from crowing about how it will offer direct aisle access to every one in business class. I counted NINE mentions of direct aisle access in the press release. Why the heck is it focusing so much on that? Because it’s pretty much the only thing that differentiates American from United in a good way. Delta has long been working toward its plan to have direct aisle access for all business class seats, and it will get there way before American. But United continues to have all window seats blocked from the aisle by another seat. And on pre-merger United 777s, there are also two middle seats in each row that don’t touch the aisle. So this is American’s effort to show that it’s better than United.

I’m really mixed on this announcement. In Business Class, it’s a very clear improvement. But coach travelers are really getting the raw end of the deal, despite American’s effort to de-emphasize the bad news. Yes, on the 777, coach passengers get better in-seat entertainment, but they also get narrower seats with one more per row. On the 767 in coach, it seems to me that nothing changes at all. The 767s won’t even get wifi. Main Cabin Extra is nice, but on the 767 there are so few seats that I bet it makes people more angry than not because they can’t get it.

In other words, this looks like the airline has put together a nice show for the court to make it look like it’s really making big changes, but there are some real negatives here. Even forgetting about those issues, the retrofit doesn’t begin for two more years, so this announcement is quite premature from a traveler standpoint.

Way back on March 5, 2010, Allegiant announced it would purchase some used 757s so that it could go to Hawai’i. Here we are more than 2 years later and the strategy is finally, mercifully, being put into place. Flights to Honolulu begin on June 29 from one city you undoubtedly expected and another that’s a bit surprising.

There has been plenty of speculation over the years and one city that has often been mentioned is Fresno. Fresno is the heart of the largest Combined Statistical Area west of the Rockies without service to Hawai’i, so you’d think it could support something, right? Allegiant is the perfect airline to fly it, and it will start with 1 weekly flight. That seems like a smart way to start and I bet it does very well.

The other city, however, is Las Vegas. Vegas is a big city, and there’s a lot of traffic wanting to head in each direction on that route, but Hawaiian flies to Honolulu 17 times a week already. Allegiant hates head-to-head competition, so why is the airline doing this? I think it’s playing it safe from an operational perspective.

Here’s how the airplane will fly. On Wednesday morning, the airplane will leave Vegas for Honolulu and it will turn right back around in the afternoon with an evening arrival in Vegas. It does the same thing on Friday. On Saturday, it goes out to Honolulu at the same time, but then the afternoon return goes to Fresno. Sunday morning, it flies back to Honolulu with a Sunday afternoon return to Vegas. That Fresno flight is what’s called an “inside turn,” which means that that it does a roundtrip from Honolulu to Fresno inside of its regular Vegas – Honolulu roundtrip.

This allows Allegiant to keep the 757 close to home. It will end every night except for Saturday in Vegas, and its crews will be Vegas-based. I’m told that on routes that it can, Allegiant will use a three-person cockpit so that the crew can fly the entire roundtrip each day. My guess is that Vegas was picked more for operational convenience than anything else.

That being said, clearly Allegiant thinks that it has a chance of making this route succeed, but it also wouldn’t surprise if it didn’t. But so what? If it doesn’t work, I assume Allegiant will be comfortable enough down the line that it can put the 757 in places like Bellingham, Eugene, etc. (I’d guess those will happen sooner than later anyway – new Hawai’i routes should be announced for the Fall.) In other words, there is no shortage of opportunity if Vegas doesn’t succeed.

What will it be like if you fly Allegiant to Hawai’i? Not much different than if you fly within the mainland today. You’re just on a bigger airplane with more people. The 757s seat a whopping 223 sardines people. I don’t know about legroom, but I’d guess seat pitch is in the 30″ range. But hey, if you want to get there cheap, this will be the way to go.

Allegiant says one way fares from Vegas will start at $174. Of course that doesn’t include all the extras you’ll need to buy along the way, but it will still probably end up less than if you fly someone else. And Allegiant is naturally hoping you won’t just be buying airfare. The airline wants to make money selling you a whole package, and it’s lined up dozens of the main hotels in Hawai’i to help it make money.

While I’m not quite as bullish on Vegas, I am excited to see how Hawai’i flying does in general. The demand should be there, but will it be profitable? After years of speculating, we’ll finally be able to see for ourselves soon enough.

Don’t get too excited. I didn’t actually get to fly on one. But I did get invited to come take a tour of a 787 while it was on the ground here in Long Beach as part of a tour around North America. Of course, I was thrilled to do it.

I had plenty of time to spend on the outside of the airplane, because they had us waiting around for quite some time until Governor Jerry Brown arrived and gave a little speech. In the meantime, we could walk around all different sides of the airplane without anyone stopping us. It was a lot of fun. My first impression was probably skewed by the fact that it was nose to nose with a C-17, the military transport aircraft they make in Long Beach.

The 787 really is a good-looking airplane. That nose makes it look mean and fast. In fact, the only thing that makes it look a little slower is the engines themselves. They’re so large and impressive in their own right that they seem a little too big for the airplane. I will say that the engines with their scalloped cowlings and curved fan blades are a sight to be seen.

I think what I liked seeing most, however, was the big wing. It’s not A380-massive by any stretch, but it’s contoured with raked and curved wingtips on the end. It’s a thing of beauty.

Enough about the outside. It was finally time to head in. While many people fawned over the seats, I couldn’t have cared less. This is a Boeing demonstrator and we’ll never see those seats on an airplane in service. For me, I was interested in seeing some other features, which I covered in this 1:55 video. (Sorry about some of the sound being too soft.)

First up was the new entryway. Though Boeing clearly made the entry larger than you’ll ever see on any airline, the height of the ceiling with the new arch feature really did make for a different impression of openness. I look forward to seeing how that works with bulkheads on either side in actual airline service.

Next up was the overhead bin. They’re big. Nothing revolutionary but certainly big. Last and most important, I wanted to see those big, beautiful windows.

They really are huge and they’re close together. They provide some excellent visibility for passengers. As a window seat guy, I’m really excited about that. But the big win for me was getting to test out the window dimmers.

The 787 doesn’t have window shades but instead uses a method that dims the windows as you like. It takes 90 seconds for the windows to get their darkest, but even then it’s only 98 percent opaque. This is the best thing to happen to windows on airplanes in years. Now those who want to look outside can still do it while those who want to watch movies without glare or sleep can do it as well. I know it sounds silly, but this is a huge improvement.

I didn’t get to experience the low cabin noise, higher humidity, or lower cabin pressurization altitude, because we didn’t fly. Something tells me I’m going to need to seek one of these out sooner rather than later.

[See all my photos of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner]

When American announced it would roll out a slew of new features on its new 777-300ER aircraft in December, I was left with more questions than answers. Now, just a bit more info has been released, and we have some answers but not all. Oh, and we have pictures.

A picture of the new First Class cabin shows that it’s not much different than what’s out there today. It’s just cleaned up, new fabric, etc. That’s ok, because much of a change wasn’t necessary. In Business Class, however, it’s a different story.

As you can see, American is using the same reverse-herringbone style of seat that US Airways has on its airplanes. (Calm down, conspiracy theorists. This has nothing to do with a potential merger between the two.) We can now be sure that the “fully lie flat” seats are going to be flat beds. Whew.

There are also a few things we can glean from the new coach seats.

The above picture shows coach seating, and American confirms that there will be a premium economy section with the exact same seats but more legroom. It’s like American is bringing back “More Room Throughout Coach,” but not actually throughout coach.

In this picture, there are at least 4 seats uninterrupted by an aisle. That can mean one of two things. It could mean that American is sticking with the 2-5-2 configuration that it has on its 777-200s, but that would be surprising. Most airlines have moved away from 2-5-2 to 3-3-3 instead because it requires fewer video power units and it allows for standardized seat sets. (United has switched to 3-3-3 as it renovates its 777 fleet.)

But this can’t be 3-3-3 because there are four together. That would most likely mean that American is moving to the increasingly popular 3-4-3 layout. I say “increasingly popular,” but I mean that only on the airline side. Passengers hate it because, naturally, it means narrower seats. That hasn’t stopped several airlines from going this route, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see American do the same.

We could try to do some math to figure out the number of seats across if American would release its planned configuration on the airplane, but it won’t. My requests were met with the response that no further information is being given at this time. What’s with all the secrecy? I don’t understand why they want to keep pushing out dribs and drabs of info.

Anything else we know? Yep. American had been saying that London would be the first to get the new 777-300ER, but now that’s not happening. The first market will now be Dallas/Ft Worth to Sao Paulo. This market is apparently doing so well for American that it’s throwing a ton of capacity into it. In June, the market goes from a daily flight to 12 weekly. And then in December, the 777-300ER will go on to the route, bringing even more capacity to the market.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that Latin America gets it first. After all, that’s really where American excels. It’s almost non-existent in Asia, it’s pretty weak in Europe, but it is the king of Latin. Stick to your strengths, right?

I decided to hold the last Emirates post from Nate until I was on paternity leave. You can see his report on the flight out to Dubai, Dubai Airport, and the flight back if you haven’t seen them.
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Probably the best thing about my trip to Dubai was building an itinerary that put me on the Boeing 777-300ER one way and the Airbus A380 the other. Not many travelers have a keen sense of their surroundings when they fly, so this presented a great opportunity to discuss the differences in the two aircraft as Emirates expands and offers both types on routes. I flew the 777 out of San Francisco for 15 hours to Dubai in Business and First Class, and then returned to New York JFK from Dubai on the A380 in Business Class. I found some fairly interesting differences in the two planes the way Emirates configures them.

Seating layout/arrangements
The 777 was in a typical 2-3-2 layout while the A380 had a very interested staggered layout of 1-2-1. Some rows had window seats with a small walkway to the aisle and others had an aisle with no seat in the window. The middle section either had two seats next to each other or two sitting on the aisle separated. The seats then rotate their position, giving each customer access to the aisle. This was a very nice feature as the A380 gives customers much more overall “area” for their individual seat, whereas the 777 you still had a neighbor – and the privacy screen really didn’t block much.

I could still watch my neighbor’s TV for most of my flight. I did select the bulkhead on the 777 and I had more wiggle room to get in and out, but the A380 still wins hands down. The 777′s “traditional” layout is much better if you are traveling with a group of friends or family, as the A380 seems to be designed more for the solo traveler. The other downside to BOTH aircraft is the aisle seats – there is still traffic up and down the aisle, so there’s a risk of getting interrupted while trying to sleep.

Service
One problem Emirates faces with the A380 is that there are a LOT of flight attendants . . . 26 to be exact. The Business Class galley is located in the back of the cabin, so you get a lot of foot traffic. While that can be nice (always someone going by that can you something) it did take time to do a full service for the 55 passengers (out of 76) in my cabin. I also can’t tell you the name of the flight attendant assigned to my section. The 777 provided excellent service as only 2 or 3 flight attendants worked my side of the airplane and I can remember their names. Overall, the 777 service seemed much more efficient.

Boarding/Deplaning
One would think boarding 500 people on an A380 would take awhile, but Emirates seemed to have this one down pat. Most of us in Business Class were in the lounge up until about 30 minutes before departure and found a short line for the premium cabins versus economy. In the A380, I didn’t see a single economy class customer. On the 777, while we had separate lines, we boarded through the same jet bridge. There was a lot of foot traffic through the 777 cabin while boarding, but the flight attendants kept the economy customers moving through, and were able to serve a pre-departure champagne service without any issues. Deplaning was equally fast, as Emirates holds back each respective cabin until those passengers are clear, and in New York we deplaned by the 2nd level. Its hard to pick the 777 or the A380 has both were very efficient.

Sleep
The A380 has a fully flat bed while it’s an angled lie flat bed on the 777. Both seats appear to be the same design and configuration except for the footrest on the A380. On the 777, your seat drops then extends out, and at 6’1″ I slept like a baby. I also really enjoyed the storage space/cut outs in the seat that also meant I had shoulder room. The A380 had a cubby hole for feet which probably helped keep rusty-sock smell from the cabin. But on the 777, it was hard to tell you weren’t lying completely flat. I’d also like to point out that I departed San Francisco at 5p and arrived in Dubai at 7p (next day) and did not feel jetlagged. I only preferred the A380 seat over the 777 because I didn’t have someone directly beside me.

Economy Class
Here’s where it can get painful.

The 777 was originally designed for 9 seats across the cabin, but Emirates has 10. So your butt and shoulders may be making contact with your seatmate for the next 13 hours. At least your knees and feet will be comfortable, as Emirates provides a few more inches of legroom. The A380 has standard seat width, but the legroom isn’t nearly as good as on the 777. In the row I tried out on the A380, the window felt a little more cramped. Both Economy cabins offer in seat video and universal and USB power ports, so even if you are stuck in the 777 in coach, you will still have plenty to keep you busy.

Here are some more pieces for comparison.

The Winner
Interestingly enough, I really enjoyed the 777 flight over the A380 flight. The A380 bar really stands out, but the service was much more consistent on the 777. The foot traffic on the A380 can (and does) stand out, so if you want to avoid it, then try to sit in the forward section of business class. Anyone who pays for Business Class (or upgrades) will not be disappointed. This airline does an amazing job and if I had the budget, I’d gladly fork out $12,000 for this type of service.