Rio-NY Aircraft
 

My Rio-NY flights on AA in March and April are on the roomy 777, but in September they're on the smaller 767. Bummer! :(

And the point of your post is? It's called high/low season...

The actual seats are no less roomy on the 767 though, and depending on your class and config may actually be bigger

According to SeatGuru.com, not in this case. Plus the economy seating on the 777 has 3-4-3 seats per row, vs 2-3-2 on the 767, this makes a big difference when the flight is not full and one has the entire row to lie down on.

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10 across on the 777 versus 7 across on the 767; the actual seat on the former is going to be a narrow slimline with little padding. Would not consider their 777 roomy. Yes, the industry standard now but avoided by frequent flyers. Hope you get your empty row whatever plane you end up on.

Thanks! Finding an empty row is always challenging and a relief when the aircraft door chime sounds. I normally book both aisle seats in the back and hope that the middle seats stay unoccupied. ;)

What are the aircraft preferred by frequent flyers? I assume it's the A380 and the 787.

My wife just flew back to RJ (via SP) from Chicago on united last night. They downgraded that from 777 to a 767 too. And it was still empty as she and many others had a full row of 3 to themselves. Too bad ticket prices are still north of a thousand...

I'm in trouble! We switched to business class and my wife got hooked, she doesn't want to fly steerage anymore...Poor me.:eek:

I'm in the same situation. :)

We fly in Y always, and I'd much rather the 767 as long as we get the (2) in the 2-3-2. Though, we always travel to Brasil during xmas and the holidays, so its either a 777 or 350.

Unfortunately I'll never lie down again. So far, 2 of my 9 trips across the equator en route to or coming back from Brazil have included bouts of moderate/severe turbulence where you "get air" if you're not strapped in. I wonder if my small sample is unlucky or if this is fairly normal.

We had almost arrived at JFK when my son told us that our flight (AA 973 on 9/7 at 9:40PM) to Rio was delayed by eleven and a half hours, this is after sitting two hours in traffic, there was no alert from AA!

We tried to switch to the AA flight to SP but it was full and we missed the cut-off for the TAM flight to Rio by a mere 5 or 10 minutes. Our only option left was to fly on Delta to SP at 9:20PM on a separate ticket, so I burned a bunch of miles and headed from terminal 8 to terminal 4 with five suitcases - the reason I took the car instead of the train was exactly to avoid carrying the heavy suitcases, especially my wife's, which always weighs a ton.

When we arrived at the Delta check-in counter an ill-willed attendant told me that we had missed the cut-off time and to go to rebook another flight, she said this without even looking at our tickets, so I went to talk to someone who I hoped was a supervisor and he led us back to the same counter where now the original ill-willed atttendant was joined by another attendant, which turned out to be as unpleasant. When my wife's suitcase went on the scale she barked that it would cost $100, as it weighed 64lbs. I told her that our original flight on AA was on business class, hoping for some understanding, but she just barked that this is coach class, not business class, end of story. Then I told her that the limit to Brazil was 70lbs and she barked that it had changed to 50lbs (I don't know if this is true or if she was just being mean, nevertheless, after 3 attemps we finally succeded in bringing it down to 50lbs).

On the way to the gate we stopped at the Sky Club to where we grabbed a quick byte on their paper plates and plastic silverware :eek:, my wife tried the coffee, but it was cold.

The seat space in coach on the Delta 767 is horrible, plus the seat hardly reclines at all. It should be against the law to have such limited seat space on a nine and a half hour long flight. My leg kept cramping and it was impossible to sleep. When we were over Bermuda it dawned on me that we still had another 8 hours left to endure on these uncomfortable seats, oh well. But that wasn't the end of our misery, we arrived at 8:30AM in SP we cleared customs and were able to check-in to the 9:40AM flight to Rio, all that remained was to cut the line to clear security (sorry fellow passengers), and to run-walk what seemed to be a mile to gate 233, where I finally was able to use the bathroom in the plane.

All in all, it was a harrowing experience, I'm glad it's over and the last two days in Rio have been marvelous!

Delta, shame on you!

My mother-in-law just flew delta from Rio and was also stung by the weight limit. It's a hard 23 kilos limit or $100 fee...

The business seat on the 767 on AA was not as good as the one on their 777.

I'm glad AA will be flying the 777 on the NY-Rio route on my next trip in April 2018.

I just learned that AA is suspending its non-stop flights between NY and Rio in March of 2019 (resuming in December). This will add a lot of hassle and a minimum of 3 extra hours to an otherwise very tolerable flight. :(