B/E Aerospace Confirms They'll Be Supplying New American Airlines Business Class Seat

American dropped Zodiac as their seat supplier and went looking for a new business class seat.

American’s new Boeing 777-300ERs got an off the shelf business class seat from Zodiac Aerospace. It’s basically the US Airways seat, later adopted by airlines like Cathay Pacific and EVA Air. It’s a fantastic seat.

For their Boeing 777-200s being retrofit, and their new Boeing 787s, they went with a custom-designed business class seat from Zodiac. It’s sleek looking, and the rear-facing seats have fantastic table space, but in my opinion it feels tight and confining especially at the shoulders in bed mode. Some passengers complain about the divider between the two center seats being fixed up or down and not movable, and some complain the seats shake.

American Airlines Boeing 777-200 Business Class Seat from Zodiac

The 777-200 retrofit project has been slow. Deliveries of the 787s had been delayed. And that’s long been thought to be the result of slow deliveries of seats from Zodiac. American cancelled their Zodiac contract, filed a lawsuit, and went looking for new seats.

American has too many old angled seats left on their Boeing 777-200s. The new 777-200 seat is different than the 777-300ER seat. And now we’ll see more than one new business class on the 777-200s. The 767s, of course, have a different (and narrower) seat as well.

Back in September I predicted they’d go with B/E Aerospace for new seats. It seemed like their Super Diamond seat would be a good fit.

That began to look more likely when American announced a premium economy product debuting with their Boeing 787-9s. B/E Aerospace would provide those premium economy seats, and also the new US Airways first class seats going into retrofitted Airbus A319s.

B/E Aerospace is now confirming that they are the seat supplier for all three classes of service on American’s Airbus A350s that will be entering the fleet. So they will be providing American with a new business seat!

B/E Aerospace also confirmed last night that it would be making seats for all three seating classes on Amercian Airlines’ new A350s.

David Thomas, the airline’s regional director for the UK/Ireland, Middle East and Africa, told the Belfast Telegraph it started working with B/E Aerospace after problems with former supplier Zodiac Aerospace.

Hopefully we’ll hear more specifics soon. And I’d hope that they’ll be using the same seat on Boeing 787-9s that will be delivered in a few months as they will on future aircraft like the A350. Because American really doesn’t need even more different business seats than they have today.