American Ditching First Class On Boeing 777-300ERs In Major Cabin Retrofit

American Airlines is finally retrofitting its tired, worn-out Boeing 777-300ER cabins, and the first updated aircraft may enter service within the next few weeks.

Back in September 2022, American Airlines announced a number of sweeping cabin improvements for its long-haul aircraft including its Boeing 787-9s, Boeing 777-300ERs, along with an updated cabin design that would be featured on their newly delivered Airbus A321XLRs.

As part of their move towards a more premium set up dubbed the “Flagship Suites”, their 787-9s would feature newer Elevate Ascent business class seats, replacing the older Collins Super Diamond seats. The cabin seat count drastically favored premium seats as business went up from 30 to 51, while Premium Economy was bumped up from 21 to 30. To make room for all this, economy went from 243 seats to just 161. The new and retrofitted “78P” aircraft now seat 244 passengers instead of 285.

Their fleet of 20 larger Boeing 777-300ERs is also receiving some love, but at the expense of its first-class cabin, and will actually feature a larger seat count. For starters, its eight Flagship First seats are being done away with while Flagship Business (now referred to as Flagship Suites) will go up from 52 to 70.

These seats are also Elevate Ascent products, in a 1-2-1 config with privacy doors, lie-flat beds, wireless charging and chaise-lounge mode. Premium Economy also getting an uplift from 28 to 44 seats, featuring Safran Z535i recliners in 2-4-2, with privacy headrest wings and leg/footrests.

Economy remains the same at 216 seats in a 3-4-3 layout. In total, the retrofitted Boeing 777-300ERs will feature 330 seats instead of 304. Besides losing first class, they have also reduced the lavatory count from 12 to 9 units, but it’s not all bad when you divide and compare the numbers to competitors. There have also been a number of sacrifices along the way such as reducing Business Class and Main Cabin Extra seat pitch by one inch, removing the walk-up bar, and juggling galley space size to accommodate repositioned lavatories.

After spending more than six months in Hong Kong for retrofitting works, N718AN finally flew back to Dallas-Ft. Worth on August 13, where it will undergo final updates and certification before entering service. As noted by OMAAT, the first aircraft usually takes the longest as it’s pretty much the guinea pig as they trial and error to make sure everything is translated properly from concept to reality.

Even though the Elevate Ascent seats themselves are an established product, they need to undergo certification within American’s 777-300ER environment before they can be made available for booking. Once the first aircraft clears these hurdles, retrofitting the other 19 will be a much shorter process.

It will be interesting to see what American does as these aircraft serve lucrative long-haul markets and can’t all be pulled out of service at once. As Aviation A2Z notes, most likely they will stop selling the old First Class seats prematurely once enough of the newly configured 300s join the fleet.

If all goes well, we could see the first updated 777-300ER joining commercial service within the next few weeks at best. As a small note, the photos above show their Boeing 787-9 cabin featuring the new Elevate Ascent seats, but should look similar on the 777s.

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