American Airlines announced their order for 460 new planes, 260 from Airbus and 200 from Boeing, this morning to modernize its domestic fleet. This weekend, I had the “joy” of riding in two MD-82’s slated to be replaced by these new planes.
Once you’ve seen the legroom of one American Airlines exit row, you’ve likely seen them all.
I cleared as a standby on both of my segments to get out to Albuquerque. Both flights were nearly full in economy but had plenty of seats available in first. While I declined to take an earlier flight as a standby to try to get denied boarding compensation instead with Continental, I’m reasonably confident my chances of scoring a bump on my originally ticketed flights wasn’t that great. If worse came to worse, the gate agents could have started operationally upgrading passengers to first.
The entrance lobby features a 1914 Ingram/Foster Biplane in its atrium.
