Originally Posted by
NDFan
I think it is 52 J seats on the 77W, not 60.
Obviously they are hoping that people will recognise the new seats as vastly improved over the old ones, and will therefore be more likely to pay for them, especially on the premium-heavy routes that the 77W will be flying.
Hopefully there will also be some left over for awards and upgrades!
Right about 52 seats, of course. I ran out of fingers and toes, or forgot to subtract the two rows of First seats from the 15x4 total.
In any case, as a person who pays his own travel expenses and can't imagine paying full-J prices, I can tell you that for the past couple of years there have been a ton of juicy I-class sales as airlines struggle to attract any kind of a paying butt to those high-demand biz seats. And when lacking a good I fare I stuck myself in coach, only once have I not gotten my $350-plus-miles upgrade (TATL). And "I" is "we", usually a three-some.
I glanced at seating charts for AA136 (LAX-LHR) and AA100 (JFK-LHR) for this Friday and next. Interestingly the LAX flights (old 777) were nearly full in First and Biz and showed good loads in the back; the JFK 77W's were nearly full in First but had about 20 seats unassigned in biz. Looks like plenty of room for upgrades to biz, not so much First. (And AA is being very stingy with A-class offerings on 77W, although part of the 'demand' might be that there are only 8 first-class seats, compared to 16 in the old birds.)