I’ve had a lot of offline discussion about aircraft configuration and premium focus as of late, so I decided it was time to dive into the details to see just how things have changed at different airlines over the past decade. I unquestionably expected we’d see differences, but, well, I did not expect them to be as dramatic as they are. Each of the Big 3 US airlines has employed a very different strategy.
To have this discussion, I had to do some hard work. I pulled widebody fleet numbers today for American, Delta, and United and compared them to the numbers at the end of 2015. This wasn’t hard to do. What WAS hard was trying to figure out the configurations on each aircraft in 2015, so I could then do the math to figure out total seats that the airline had onboard. To be clear, this isn’t seats flown or any traditional metric. I’m just looking at the number of physical seats on each widebody. Where the airline flies them is something else entirely.
As I dug into this, I instantly regretted it. There are some fleets that are exceedingly difficult to figure out. But I didn’t give up and I think I got close enough. So, let me give a couple caveats before we get to the fun stuff.
- Again, these are widebodies only. I realize that the airlines all used B757s for longer haul flying to some extent, but I just couldn’t figure out a good way to look at those fleets. So, widebodies it is.
- The only widebodies I pulled out of the equation are the United domestic B777s and a handful of domestic-configured Delta B767s from 2015 since those only fly/flew within the US/short-haul.
- American was in the middle of a 777 transition in 2015. I believe the plan was to have 13 B777-200ERs with 45 business class seats and the rest with 37. If that’s wrong, well, it could change the math a little, but those are the numbers I used.
- American’s B767s were shown in their final configuration. I believe the conversion had been done by then, but if there were some stragglers, then so be it.
- Delta’s B767s are impossible to track going back to 2015. I believe most (28) were in the 76Z configuration with 26 biz and 200 coach back then, but there were some in the 76L (9?) and 76T (5?) configurations with 36 business class seats. That may not be perfectly right. Today, there are still 2 in the 76Z configuration and 7 as 76Ls, but 30 airplanes are in the new 76K config with premium economy.
- Delta’s first 19 A350s have 32 business class seats, but another 19 new deliveries and aircraft from LATAM that are being reconfigured have 40.
- United’s B777-200ERs had separate Continental and United configurations still in 2015, so I have used those numbers pre-Polaris with 50 and 48 in biz respectively.
- I’ve split United’s B767-300ERs into the 46 biz (24 aircraft) and 30 biz (13 aircraft) configurations currently, and that should be accurate.
Enough caveats, right? Meh, you probably ignored that and skipped ahead anyway, but I wanted you to understand the depths of my pain. Anyway, let’s get on with it.
Physical Widebody Seats By Cabin 2025 vs 2015
I told you it was a lot different by airline, didn’t I? Yes, they all introduced premium economy during that 10 year period, but other than that, they didn’t have much in common. Let’s go through it.
American is Actually Shrinking
I have checked and double-checked this data multiple times and run it by others. Sure enough, American has been a shrinking airline. It saw total widebody seats drop from around 38,800 to just over 35,300. How can this happen? It’s pretty simple… thank leadership decisions during the pandemic.
American saw the pandemic as an opportunity to simplify its fleet, so it made a sweeping decision to permanently retire the airline’s 15 A330-200s, 9 A330-300s, and 45 B767-300ERs. Now to be clear, I should note that there were 45 B767s in 2015. There were only 17 left at the end of 2019.
In its place, American did take two more B777-300ERs, but it was really the B787 that had to do all the heavy lifting. In 2015, American had 15 B787-8s, and now it has 37 of them with another 28 B787-9s.
When American rolled out premium economy, it shrunk the front cabins even more, now giving the B787-8s a mere 20 seats in business. That might have made sense before (maybe), but it certainly doesn’t make any sense today. The airline has a lot of B787-8s, a small airplane that’s hard to configure premium-heavy without really cutting into coach.
The end result? American’s widebody seats have shrunk, but the percent of seats in the business cabin has also gone down a smidge from 13.5 percent to 13.2 percent. Perhaps it’s not fair to say that in itself is crazy, because it did introduce premium economy which is now 9.6 percent of the fleet. If that is pulling from business and not coach as you’d hope, then maybe a smaller business class made sense in someone’s mind.
It does not make sense now.
Delta Grows But Business Shrinks
Delta has gone in a different direction that American. Total widebody seats climbed from just shy of 33,000 to more than 46,000. Where did this come from? It’s pretty simple, actually. The 18-strong B777 and dwindling 9-strong B747 fleets were retired but the entire 37 A330-900neo and 38 A350-900 fleets were built from nothing.
Surprisingly, the B767-300ER international fleet has stayed pretty flat. All the domestic ones were retired before the pandemic, but those have been pulled out of the calculation in 2015 anyway. Today, most of the B767-300ERs have been converted to the new configuration with premium economy onboard. There are still seven that have no premium economy but have more business class seats instead. Those tend to do a lot of San Francisco – New York/JFK and Atlanta flying along with JFK to Prague. And somehow there are still two airplanes in the old configuration from before premium economy existed.
So why did the percentage of seats in the business cabin on Delta go down in the last 10 years? It really comes down to how the airline decided to outfit its A330-900neos and A350-900s. Both of those have lower percentages than the rest of the fleet, so it brought the count down. Just consider this. The A330-200 has more business class seats at 34 than the original A350-900 has at 32.
Delta is working on updating this with the new configuration on its A350s with 40 business class seats, so the percentage will rise again.
United Goes All In
And that brings us to United which has absolutely gone wild with its widebody fleet. In 2015, United had the fewest widebody seats in aggregate at just shy of 27,000 but it is now an easy number one at more than 53,000. It had the highest percentage of business class seats at 17.6 percent, and remarkably, even after adding premium economy, that has stayed relatively flat.
At United, the airline’s B787-8 and B787-10 fleets are the stingiest. But those aren’t huge fleets at 12 and 21 respectively. There are 45 B787-9s alone, not to mention all the other airplanes.
We also can’t forget what United has done with its B767-300ERs to create the London chariot. This subset of 24 airplanes now has 46 beds which is more than a quarter of the entire airplane. Those did not exist back in 2015.
What I do find interesting, however, is that this strategy of a higher premium cabin count doesn’t seem new. The B747 was over 17 percent. Even the original B787-8 configuration was over 16 percent before they started adding premium economy to the aircraft.
I have no doubt that American would have more seats if Boeing had been able to deliver aircraft on time, but ultimately, the airline has decided it seems fine falling so far behind. That tracks. Meanwhile, it looks like Delta overdid on premium economy and cut back the beds too much. It’s working to fix that now. United, however, just keeps growing like a weed and trying to surf that premium wave for as long as it can. So far, it’s Delta and United that are turning in the best financial results.
