American's Suites With Doors Won't 'Show The Door To The Poor'

Chris Matyszczyk is known for taking my airline leaks and sensationalizing them. Here, though he takes word of American Airlines business class seats coming with doors on the airline’s new delivery Boeing 787-9s and uses that to pull his very best Christopher Elliott, which is to say taking a travel story he doesn’t understand and doing his best to turn it into an allegory about class warfare and socialism of the North Korean variety.

It makes sense that Matyszczyk's prose is as nonsensical as Kim's. The piece is titled, "American Airlines just showed the door to customers who aren't rich."

He starts with airlines being short-staffed and business travel not being fully returned. The Points Guy was blamed for the late word of the new business class seats because he failed to cite anyone who had covered it the day before. After I wrote this piece and scheduled it, I have seen others write about it as well.

When in fact the curtain between classes goes back decades, Matyszczyk calls business class with doors agated community. He says that fewer seats on these planes is bad for The Poors, when in fact a less-densified American Airlines aircraft should be celebrated by all. He does nothing to analyze the extent to which other airline options won't provide such travel as well, or whether American Airlines is likely to earn a revenue premium or continue its strategy.

He says something about Southwest changing its online distribution strategy for business travel, as though it's not true.

He doesn't understand the issue well enough to frame it this way, but he does know that coach passengers today will usually board through 2L and walk through premium economy not business.

The experience can be exacerbated on planes when Economy Class passengers board and walk past Fancy Class passengers who are already on their second glass of champagne.

…If you’re a regular American Airlines Economy Class customer and you have to walk through the gated community, how will you feel when you get to your own seat? Oh, I may have forgotten to mention it. Economy Class seats aren’t changing from the last iteration of this plane.

The economy experience is worse now but there will be more opportunities to escape it. That is a bad thing.

American Airlines business class is not for the rich at the expense of the poor.

• While American Airlines business class isn’t generally for The Poors, this is business class, not first class.
• Historically it’s the province of middle managers flying on someone else’s dime.
• When was the last time you saw Elon or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates in American Airlines business class? To be sure Prince William once flew American Airlines coach but he also flew Ryanair.
• American won’t be the first, or even among the first, to put doors on business class. Delta already did it (arguably second, or even third) and United is working on plans for it too.
• American’s plan is for more business class seats, and greater supply should mean some of the seats available at a lower price – including lower mileage pricing and for upgrades – making business class even less the province of the rich than it is today.

Better business class will spell the end of Flagship First Class on American Airlines.

Robert Isom, the new CEO of American Airlines, told employees that the airline will continue to focus on the Frontier and Spirit Airlines segments.

[T]oday there is a real drive within the industry and with the traveling public to want to have really at the end of the day low cost seats. And we’ve got to be cognizant of what’s out there in the marketplace and what people want to pay.

The fastest growing airlines in the United States Spirit and Frontier. Most profitable airlines in the United States Spirit. We have to be cognizant of the marketplace and that real estate that’s how we make our money.

We don’t want to make decisions that ultimately put us at a disadvantage, we’d never do that.

At the end of the day, remember that Air Koryo offers business class.

The New York Times ran an op-ed last month that argued that airline seating has lessons about income inequality and class struggle. It did not do a good job. When you try to stretch an analogy farther than the facts will take it, it's one thing.

In general.

The AAdvantage program has been degraded by American in the last couple of years. The selling proposition of AAdvantage was American. They don't have the airline operation that Delta does, or the route network that United has access to through Star Alliance.

In general.

Domestic coach is usually not worth international first class. I wasn't going to comment on the debate over the best use of miles. Rick called international first class his worst use of miles.

In general.