American Airlines accelerates A321 cabin refurbishment

American Airlines (AA, Dallas/Fort Worth) expects to complete the refurbishment of all of its A321-200 cabins by “early 2022”, a year ahead of the original pre-pandemic schedule, Chief Financial Officer Derek Kerr said during the carrier’s quarterly earnings call

“Our B737 retrofit program was completed in May, and we continue to expect our A321 aircraft to be complete by early next year, a full year ahead of our original schedule,” Kerr said.

President Robert Isom clarified that there were around 60 aircraft yet to be reconfigured.

The wide-ranging refurbishment programme aims to harmonize the cabin layouts of all of American’s previous-generation B737-800s and the A321s in addition to increasing their overall capacity. All 303 of its B737-800s are already configured for up to 172 passengers (including 16 in business class), the same as AA’s B737-8s. In turn, the A321s, following the completion of the refurbishment, will seat up to 181 passengers, including 20 in business class. The refurbishment does not include A321s in transcontinental configuration, which only seats up to 102 passengers. In total, American Airlines operates 218 A321s, the ch-aviation fleets advanced module shows. The carrier’s A321-200NXs seat up to 176 passengers.

Kerr also said that American Airlines was in talks with Boeing about adjusted deliveries of its remaining B787s.

“We continue to work with Boeing to finalize the timing of our delayed B787-8 deliveries that were expected to arrive in 2021. In the meantime, due to the continued uncertainty in the delivery schedule, we have proactively removed these aircraft from our winter schedule to minimize potential passenger disruption,” he explained.

American Airlines has thirteen B787-8s due from Boeing Capital, all of which were to have delivered by the end of 2021 (although by September 30, the airline had already accepted that only three would be delivered in 2021 and the remainder in 2022). However, B787 deliveries have been paused since late May 2021 due to production issues. The airline operates twenty-four B787-8s and twenty-two B787-9s. It also has a further thirty -9s on firm orders, including 25 from the manufacturer and five from Boeing Capital. The deliveries of the outstanding -9s are not expected to resume before mid-2023.

Kerr underlined that the delay did not affect the financing of the aircraft.