American Airlines Orders 50 Airbus A321XLRs

As an ANC based, I would love to see AA servicing ANC/MIA or ANC/JFK on these planes.

While long haul flights in economy class **ideally should have seats with a minimum width of 18” and at least 33” row pitch to allow for of modicum of comfort** (including modest recline to better allow for sleep on overnight red-eye flights when many long haul flights are operated) when one is (literally) strapped into exceptionally limited space (as if being handcuffed to a desk in a police station or to a bench located in a small room adjacent to the main hall in customs and immigration), often next to total strangers who may/may not be taller/bigger overall than themselves, all while being confined into a space smaller than a utility closet, or their favorite chair at home to read or watch tv, if most major airlines configure their Airbus A321XLRs with **NOT LESS than 32” row pitch**, then apart from those appallingly small/narrow lavatories (especially that hideous, claustrophobic outboard side lav/loo in the rear bulkhead [that Airbus hilariously calls “SpaceFlex” say the way American gives new meaning to the word used for its (so NOT an) “Oasis” 737s - but ah, I digress!] which translates as: to enter and use, most passengers must be flexible enough themselves to stoop/crouch; and then, once inside, flexible enough to do their calls of nature in spaces smaller/narrower than an outhouse, their dog’s doghouse, or the bathrooms in their child’s pre-K school; and finally, wash their hands using a sink not much bigger than their cell phones before heading back out to their seats and touching the top of every other aisle seat as they wend their way back to their own seat...) even an average sized person of 5’8” who fits comfortably into W32 Levi’s [like me!] had to crouch to enter, and then could barely move around [pivot/turn] once inside, a narrow body A321LR/XLR at 32” pitch + 18” wide seats will still beat hands-down ANY (atrocious & hideous) 9-abreast “densified” Boeing 787 or an equally horrible 10-abreast “densified” 777 with their exceptionally narrow aisles and those preposterously narrow 17”-17.2” wide seats that even an average size person (like me) CANNOT fit into comfortably seeing as the width of my (modest sized) shoulders alone is 18”, which means from the get go the seats are NOT wide enough for an average size person to fit into! I mean, HELLO! did anyone see that NBC News interview a month or two ago where NEITHER Lester Holt NOR Dougie P fit in the economy seats of the 10-abreast Boeing 777 used as a prop for the interview - even when they were seated pivoting sideways to (kinda sorta) face each other? Don’t know about other readers here, but over the past 18 months I flew a pair each of those exceptionally nasty densified 777 and 787 Boeing beasts, each time for ultra long haul red eye flights, ~11 hrs LHR-JNB-LHR and ~16 hrs JFK-TPE-JFK, and they were every bit as horrible to actually experience as most have described them as being. So, if by some miracle, A321s used for long haul flights turn out to have 18” wide seats AND 32” (or maybe even 33” - hey, once can dream...) row pitch, then other than those nasty micro loos, it just might turn out that these narrow bodies are actually BETTER than any of those hideously uncomfortable densified Boeing 10-abreast 777s and 9-abreast 787s! Just sayin‘ ;)

This is good news because “10 abreast wide body comfort” is a total lie as is 9 and 11 abreast. Being an Airbus it’s built around 18 inch (not 17) seats and 2 inch armrests and being a single aisle they can’t reduce it like they do in wide bodies. The comfort will come not only from the nice wide seats but bypassing hubs. Airbus have 1 reduced cabin altitude from 8000ft to 6000ft. 2 introduced 30% more massive bins which can easily store three full sized roller bags above each aisle 3 increased water supply from 200 to 490 liters and introduced a garbage compactor to handle the waste expected from the multiple hot meal services. The aircraft is a little slow but that’s better than having to wait several hours waiting for a connecting flight.