A seatback on an American Airlines Boeing 737.
Leslie Josephs/CNBC
American Airlines is finally giving a green light to seatback screens as the carrier works to close a profit gap with rivals Delta Air Lines and United Airlines. But customers will have to wait a little while.
The new screens, which will feature 4K displays, will start appearing with new deliveries from Boeing and Airbus in 2028. The airline will also retrofit aircraft so passengers in all cabins will be able to use the screens and other additions like Bluetooth audio pairing and USB-C charging.
American has been “seriously considering” the technology, along with a major cabin revamp, for months. The company had long eschewed seatback screens, with executives contending that it wasn’t worth the cost of equipment and weight they added to the aircraft and saying they expected flyers to use their own devices for entertainment.
“The technology has advanced so much from when we made this decision more than a decade ago,” Chief Customer Officer Heather Garboden said in an interview. “Ultimately, when you have customer preference and customer satisfaction improvements, that also generates revenue.”
She declined to say how much American is spending on the initiative but said the installations should be complete in the early 2030s.
On Tuesday, American announced that its revamp will include more first-class seats on its Airbus A321neos and its Boeing 737 Max 10s, though deliveries of the latter are still several years away. American is also adding more extra legroom seats across its fleet.
Those premium seats can be double the price of a coach ticket or more. For example, a round-trip ticket from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport was going for $447 in coach and $1,161 in first class.
American CEO Robert Isom told CNBC in June that he and his team are working to close the profit gap with its large airline competitors, through more premium seats, plush lounges and improving the airline’s network. He said American is also planning to refurbish its Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners with the carrier’s new business-class suites, and add more of them. The carrier is also in the market for new wide-body planes and has been evaluating options from Boeing and Airbus.
American reported a profit of $71 million for the second quarter, compared with United’s $805 million and Delta’s $1.6 billion in the same period.
