rjw_lgb_ca

Now, you have to imagine I'm braying "WHY?!?!?" like Nancy Kerrigan to get the full impact of the kvetch to follow:

WHY?!?!? did American change ALL the equipment in and out of LGB to 757s? We used to enjoy our little MD-80s and bigger 737-800s with MRTC. Well, I did. It's like the MD-80s were coming back home to where they were made (over at old McDonnell-Douglas), and the 737s were just nice new planes.

Now, I'm glad that American is ferrying more people in and out of LGB to DFW and JFK. But I'm just not looking forward to being cramped into Coach like a veal calf, dammit!

Is this happening at other airports-- AA swapping out slightly smaller equipment for the sardine-esque 757s? Is it a conspiracy against anyone taller than 5'2"? Is Danny DeVito running American Airlines now...?!

rkkwan

My guess is that they're putting the LRTC 757s to low-fare routes they have to compete with low cost airlines - in your case, Jetblue. So, don't complain too much as you should have found fares cheaper than before.

rjw_lgb_ca

You may be right-- fares do seem to be heading a bit lower on routes that JetBlue competes on (I just got $256 round-trip LGB-FLL). But I am a bit surprised that AA can fill 757s in an ittie-bittie facility like LGB, even given that LGB is a lot easier to deal with than LAX in many areas (parking, security, walk to the gate/baggage claim).

I guess I'll take my LRTC seats and be happy that the rates are lower. Now if we could get a good sandwich place at LGB to bring lunch onto those long JetBlue flights...!!

rkkwan

AA's has long used the strategy of flooding a city with lots of cheap seats when there's a low-cost competitors in order to:

- maintain market share (or at least not lose as much)
- try to force the competitor to leave, or at least cut back

And they have been pretty successful in doing that. Not saying whether I like their strategy or not, but that's the reason why they're doing it.

AAFrequentFlyer

You won't have a problem if you get any seat in row 9 or seats 10A or F. Plenty of legroom.

As rkkwan stated, this is a low revebue route. Add that to the fact that AA has to fly these newly reconfigured planes somewhere, this is as good of a route(s) as any. I also noticed that my airport which was mostly served by MD-80s has few more 757s instead now. I'm talking about TPA-DFW and TPA-MIA. It's about 1/2 of the flights. I just make sure I pick the MD-80 flight if I need to go through DFW, and I fly in F (thanks to upgrades), but I just don't and never did like the 757.

BeachBoi

Actually, on some of the reconfigured 757's out of LGB, depending on the ship, row 7 is "choice",seats 7D 7E all by themselves with no seats on the opposing side.Row 8 seats A B C are BH seats, D E F free and clear.....In addition, rjw, LGB DFW are presently full meal service in coach, of course subject to change without notice..atleast that is what you are told on the phone!

AAFrequentFlyer

BeachBoi,

You are correct. These are the old TWA planes. Till recently it was easy to know which model you would fly just by the flight #, not any more. AA integrated these TWA planes into the AA schedule. The only way to tell now it's by looking at the seatmap during reservations. If it's AA757 then follow my advice, if it's TWA757 follow BeachBoi's advice. Also we both forgot to mention exit rows. Row 18 on AA plane and row 25 for the TWA planes, although be careful with the window seats on TWA exit row seats as the slide compartment extends into your space a little. Basically there are still around 12 good seats in economy on these planes.

rjw_lgb_ca

Thanks for the pointers. I'm resigned to the 757-- I don't like them either (they make funny noises at takeoff, they're too long and narrow-- why did Boeing have to keep the 727 fuselage width for this size of plane?!), but they're safe and I'll get where I want to go, so what the hell. It could be worse-- they could switch to American Eagle and we'd get the ERJs or CRJs...!!

Otis_B_Driftwood

I guess this explains why AA is using 757s out of SFO to MIA. They're the old TWA planes.

I just returned from a flight that had us cooped up for 7 hours on one of these old warhorses. I will never use AA again if the plane choice is a 757. There are other options.

rjw_lgb_ca

On a related note: What's this about JetBlue instituting ALMRTTC (A Little More Room Throughout the Cabin) on some of its planes? I read that they've increased pitch some 2 inches in a large percentage of its Airbuses.... Whoo-hoo!! Now we're talking!

Patty

I thought all JetBlue A320's had 34" seat pitch from row 11 back. Rows 1-10 are 32". Have they not converted all the airbus aircraft?

Patty

Looks like it was completed last year

http://www.jetblue.com/learnmore/pre...asp?newsId=213

Lisasnv

AA bought out our hometown airline RenoAir, couple years ago, "to have access to the west coast". Well, they started selling off everything including our MD-80s, closed out all the routes, people etc. Heard they did the same to TWA.The corporate bottom line is all that counts. Lisa