American Airline needs to update their fleet

Here I sit in my hotel (more about that in the next post) in Paris at 3:30AM, unable to sleep.

Instead of lying here trying to convince my body that it absolutely needs to keep still and my brain to stop continually jumping from subject to subject, I decided to write some blog entries.

This project I’ve been managing and helping to execute has had me traveling a lot more this year than in any given year.
Most of my trips have been on America Airlines and mainly to Europe.

It seems that AA flies 767’s as their plane of choice to Europe and that in itself isn’t a problem. The problem, as I see it, is that they have fallen depressingly behind in keeping their 767 fleet up on modern conveniences.

I am no newbie when it comes to international travel and am therefore used to seeing planes with modern conveniences in business class like LCD screens that pop out of the middle arm rest (or in older planes, mounted on the seat in front of you), seats that go almost horizontal which allow for a great sleep, and seats that are controlled by electronic motors (instead of what appears to be air pressure).

To start with, the AA fleet of 767’s have a tiny business class. Only 6 rows. The 6th row is annoyingly close to the engine hanging off the wing. I’ve had the misfortune of sitting in that row on a few trips and I can attest ot the fact that its noisy. Thanks to my noise canceling headphones, I was able to listen to my iPod in relative peace.

Most planes have a “TiVo-like” system where you can start movies whenever you want, pause them, rewind, fast forward, etc. The AA fleet of 767’s have no personal video system of any kind. On top of that, there is no LCD mounted on the seat in front of you or one that pops out of the middle arm rest. Instead, they have this quaint ritual of handing out portable DVD players with AA branded DVD’s in them. I mean, come on!

In addition, they have those annoying projector screens showing programs in a sequence and the light from these keeps you awake becasue the plane can't get close to darkness when you want to sleep.

This last flight was particularly annoying for another reason completely. The flight was packed so I didn’t get my usual window seat with an empty seat next to me so I had to sit in an aisle seat with someone sitting right next to me.

In itself this isn’t too bad but what made it almost unbearable was the passenger. He would not keep still. He was constantly making violent movements like waggling his legs, kicking his legs, banging the tray table with his hands, and jerking his body around. I couldn’t sleep at all! Even when he was sleeping, he was jerking around! Anyway, this is probably the reason I’m up so early in the morning with jet lag.

On the positive side, their air hosts and hostesses are nice and their food is great. In general AA is a great airline, its just that they really need to upgrade those planes.