Antarius

I believe that they're slated for eventual replacement as more 7M8s and a321neos come along int he next few years. With the supply chain delays, engine OEM issues and MAX grounding, its slowed things down.

jljones78

From Leff's article, this is a quote from Isom:
Where do we go from here? There’s some things on the A319 that I’d like to look at. I think that if you talked to Brian [Znotins] today he’d rather have an A319 with a larger first class section. I think that we’d like to have oversized bins in that aircraft. We’d like to have a much more common fleet from the 319 perspective. Probably a ways to go on that, but that’s something that we’ll probably tee up next.

Same article, quote from Znotins:
We would obviously love to do a modification on the 319s as Robert says to add more first class seats, to get the bigger bins, have a better product on board.

jljones78

I'm not sure if I'm an edge case here, but the way AA seems to run pricing on the J cabin of the 319 causes me to frequently book UA and AS instead. It seems to me that when 2 J seats are sold the pricing for the other 6 is stratospheric, so I typically book UA or AS J, maybe with a worse routing, but at a 50-75% discount. I've done this at least half a dozen times a year for the last three years -- EGE to AUS through DFW for $2000 or through DEN for $850 is a fairly typical comparison.

aztimm

That just seems silly. Isom was there during the AA-US merger (he was a part of the old US Airways, even before the HP merger), and saw the US A319's with 12F seats go down to 8F seats. It wasn't like this happened 20+ years ago with other people in charge; I think it happened in 2014-2016, and he was among the top brass at the new AA.
Both the HP and US versions of the A319 had 12F seats, and it seemed to work well for both, and the merged US. I have no idea why the new AA went with the 8F version, but no one is to blame but the people who are currently still in charge.

IADCAflyer

Or use the rear on the queen size bed....

zarkov505

The problem was that USdbaAA (before it became USdba: this was what made it clear that the "merger" was a done deal) bought the A319s to replace the Mad Dogs. To get close to the Mad Dog capacity, they HAD to cut a row of F seats, to fit in a few more rows of Y seats. Even then, they had to go to RJ seat pitch, and they STILL couldn't match the Mad Dog seat counts. I commented to an AA GA in HSV that the A319 acquisition told us everything we needed to know about USdbaAA's plans for HSV and AA in general.

I also remember a conversation with an AA FA, before the merger talks showed up. At that time, the plan was to replace the Mad Dogs with 737s, which would have added capacity through the system. AA already had plenty of 737s, and had pilots and maintenance capabilities well-established.

At the time, AA had *NO* Airbus metal, *NO* Airbus drivers, *NO* Airbus maintenance capabilities. Buying Airbus made *NO* sense for AA: they would have had to spend a fortune to buy the support infrastructure and personnel. US had plenty of Airbus metal, and had the infrastructure in place. The ONLY way AA could have made it work was if they *KNEW* they were going to "merge" with US, and pick up Airbus support from their new masters.

born sleepy

Didn’t AA have plenty of Airbii on order before the US takeover was announced? From what I remember, the Airbus order was basically a poke in the eye at Boeing for not developing a 737/757 replacement.

Antarius

or like any company that needs to add equipment that they don't have - you hire the people with the skill set.

AA didn't own 777s until they got the first delivery of them in the 90s. How did they manage that?

There's not this anti Airbus vendetta at airlines like people pretend. AA used to have a decent size fleet of A300s.

they did. Boeing could not supply the aircraft they needed in the time they wanted, so a split order was on the cards. Also relying on one OEM alone in a dupoly is risky contingency planning.

I don't think any of these major billion dollar corporations are trying to poke other billion dollar corporations in the eye. They buy what they need at the price thats best for it.
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It's less about poking Boeing in the eye than buying a product that Airbus makes that Boeing doesn't. There isn't anything Boeing has now that can toe to toe with the a321. Similarly, the 787 has beaten the snot out of the a330neo and therefore airlines like AA have continued to order them over and over again.

Herb687

AA had A300s before. I can't remember if they left the fleet before the first pmAA A319/321 purchase was being negotiated.

Given a big enough fleet, I'd want to have multiple manufacturers represented. What happens when an emergency AD grounds an entire fleet? Not to mention the strategy of dangling the carrot of a future order in front of OEMs. Especially in something like aviation where there's a huge product support component to the relationship between airframer and operator.

There's an airframer over in SAV with a lot of pissed off customers operating shiny new very expensive aircraft that can't fly when it's too windy!

Antarius

Last a300 left in 2009. 2 years before the LAA order.

probably some overlap..not necessarily negotiations, but fleet planning.

Herb687

I see we also agree on benefits of having two OEMs represented to maximize leverage and minimize operational risk. Great minds think alike?

D3Kingg

A temporary reconfiguration only if the Pope is making a US tour.

Antarius

The pope flying on an AA a319 is exactly as likely as the suggestion of 4 pax J cabin.

diburning

AA was also looking for a large fleet replacement, putting them in a position to place one of the largest (if not the largest) single aircraft order with Airbus in history, allowing them to negotiate a MSC (Most Significant Customer) clause on the contract requiring Airbus to offer their best price, and should they offer the same model to another airline for a lower price, provide a refund to AA for every aircraft for the difference. This is what drove United to go to Boeing for their order of new airacraft, and the used market for their Airbus needs.