I can breathe. Seat comfort is the most important thing on a flight. If an airline is trying to build loyalty, this certainly helps. This past February, American Airlines upped the ante and began removing two rows of Coach seats from its domestic and international aircraft, giving seats throughout the entire Coach cabin 34 to 35 inches of pitch. This conversion program, which was two-thirds completed by early June, is removing 7,200 Coach seats from the American fleet, or slightly more than 6.4 percent of the fleet's total seat count.
American passengers are enthusiastic about the conversion.
While you're waiting for takeoff, you can overhear people saying how much they like the new legroom. Earlier this year, it announced the installation of a separate World Traveller Plus cabin. World Traveller Plus, which will appear in some markets by late fall, sounds like a great service for business travelers who cannot afford Business Class tickets and for leisure travelers willing to pay an increased fare for increased comfort. But like Virgin's Premium Economy, this will ease the pain only for travelers on long-haul routes to London and beyond. More practically, American's and United's new Coach legroom is great news for Chicago travelers because the two carriers control more than 83.3 per cent of the flights in and out of O'Hare.