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It’s always a good idea to pay attention to airline schedule changes if you have one or more flights booked a few months ahead as some of the changes we see can make a significant difference to your flight.
The closer you are to your departure date the less likely an airline is to change the aircraft it’s employing (unless a mechanical fault or a weather front intervene) but when you have flights booked over six months out the seat/cabin you reserved at the time of booking may look a lot different when it actually comes time to fly.
American’s Dallas Ft. Worth – Buenos Aires route is a good example of this as, per its latest schedule update, the airline has swapped the 777-200ER aircraft that currently operates this route for a smaller 787-8 Dreamliner for the period 6 June – 26 October 2019.
The net results are as follows:
- The Business Class cabin reduces in size from 36 seats to just 20 seats
- The Premium Economy cabin increases in size from 24 seat to 28 seats
- The Economy Class cabin reduces in size from 212 seats to 183 seats
The smaller Business Class cabin is probably the most significant change here as upgrades have now become a lot harder to clear and the chances of Business Class saver awards opening up are now even slimmer than before (and they were slim enough as it was!)
There’s also a chance that the Business Class seats will be getting worse too.
Some of American’s 777-200ER aircraft offer the B/E Aerospace Super Diamond Seats which are pretty popular with flyers….
…while the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner offers coffin-like Zodiac Business Class seats in a ying/yang layout which I really don’t like:
Some of American’s 777-200ERs are equipped with these Zodiac seats too but, if the 777 being replaced offers the B/E Aerospace seat, the aircraft swap is even worse news for Business Class flyers.
Check Your Seat Assignments
If you’re already booked to fly this route in the period that the 787-8 will be operating you should check your seat assignments as soon as possible.
The 777 and the 787 have very different cabin layouts (in Premium Economy it’s 2-4-2 vs 2-3-2 and in Economy Class it’s 3-4-3 vs 3-3-3) and the exits are in different rows too.
What all this means is that although you may have selected an exit row at the time of booking that may not be where American has you seated any more and you may have avoided a bulkhead when first selecting your seats but you may be in a bulkhead row right now.
The sooner you check the sooner you can re-select your seats and ensure that you’re sitting in the least objectionable seat possible.
[HT: Routes Online]
