I’m ok with AI inducting different aircraft with different configurations because all the “new” planes have modern seats (with Aeroflot’s A359 looking quite up there in quality). AI will never have the most cutting edge seats (nor should it). DL has like 4 different J configs that come to mind (one true suites) to old style reverse herringbone on A330 to just plane old seats on 763. So AI will be fine. The bigger question is when will the refurbs start happening and what seats will they have? If they just put new seat covers in J, the refurb will fail (but it doesn’t look like that is Tara’s style so not too worried. To be honest, I don’t need the best seats (needs to be true lie flat and direct aisle access), I need good food, clean seats and planes, proper duvet and pillow and full selection of English IFE. If AI can deliver that and nonstops from the US, they will do great. That is why I really liked Jet - not the best seats but great food, service…
I will end with - whoever thought people would be excited to try out an AI flight / plane. The DL leases ended up being good PR for AI and good strategy deploying them out of BOM to at least have their premium mini-hub have a competitive J product,