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First Airbus with new RECARO seats taking flight soon

Within the next week, we plan to begin flying our first Airbus outfitted with new, slimmer seats in United Economy and Economy Plus, which will result in an additional half-inch of headroom and almost a full inch of additional knee space for our customers. In addition to the seats and our new, larger overhead bins, we’re adding Wi-Fi and, later this year, on-demand streaming video for Wi-Fi-enabled devices throughout the cabin.
While several European carriers feature the RECARO seats on their mainline narrowbody aircraft, our version of the seat will have several upgraded features to improve the comfort offered by the base model, including multi-directional headrests, added lumbar support and a seat bottom cushion with more padding and multiple layers of soft memory foam. The width of the new seats is equivalent to the width of the current Airbus seats. The literature seat pocket sits higher on the seat, increasing knee space, and there’s a new amenity pocket for personal items.
When the modification is complete, all Airbuses will have an extra row in United Economy, and we will add seats in Economy Plus to all A319s and the A320s that we didn’t previously operate as Ted aircraft (a United sub-brand that we discontinued).
As with Wi-Fi, we will eventually offer the streaming product for purchase, although we initially plan to offer some complimentary content.
The move to Wi-Fi and streaming entertainment also means that live air traffic control will no longer be available via Channel 9, although we are exploring options to bring it to Wi-Fi equipped aircraft. We will continue to offer Channel 9 across much of the rest of our fleet, including on all international long-haul and p.s. aircraft featuring on-demand entertainment.