American Airlines to add more Seating

American Airlines made an announcement on Thursday that it will add more seating in jets that are narrow body. The U.S. based airline said it is putting the additional seats into its coach sections on a certain number of aircraft.

The airline’s flight services vice president, Lauri Curtis disclosed the plans for the additional seats to the flight attendants. The additional seats mean the airline buy law must have more onboard flight attendants.

Those planes in the airline’s fleet that will have seats added are the 737 and the MD-80. However, it has not been stated how many rows and total seats would be added to each aircraft.

The airline said in the same statement to flight attendants that the seats were being added to help increase the airlines’ revenue following its merger with US Airways, a former rival.

Michael Boyd a consultant for airlines around the world said that the additional sets would not pay for themselves unless a minimum of 10 seats or two rows were added. The reason so many are needed is because of the additional cost of having another flight attendant to pay.

With two new rows, Boyd said the leg room lost would be 2 ½ inches, but because the seats today are less bulky some of that space would be recovered meaning only approximately one inch of leg space per passenger would be lost.

US Airways agreed in February to acquire the parent company of American, AMR. AMR, in November of 2011, filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to emerge from that upon the final merging with US Airways.