Originally Posted by JonNYC

That would be a pretty good way of describing it. I have posted before just tiny parts of the story of how concept-A, B and C eventually morphed into D. The original plan was to introduce a truly revolutionary seat with absolutely unprecedented amounts of personal space (for a U.S. carrier) -- sort of a scaled-down flagship suite-- and AA marketing materials even reflected that for a time (long after the seat had been massively shrunk down and changed in design entirely.)

The idea was to have a "blank canvas" (or whatever cliche one might choose to employ) and have a revolutionary product-- Cirrus at the time being deemed ("good but nothing special" by AA IFP.)

My old posts might come up using search of "personal space" along with "Cirrus" etc.

But, in any event, certainly had absolutely nothing to do with trying to save $ on the seat, going with off the shelf Cirrus would have saved a fortune and could have been line-fit by Boeing to boot.