{"id":850139,"date":"2026-09-16T20:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T20:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/850139\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T20:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T20:06:16","slug":"american-airlines-says-30-of-seats-drive-half-of-revenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/850139\/","title":{"rendered":"American Airlines says 30% of seats drive half of revenue"},"content":{"rendered":"

The main cabin of a retrofitted American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER used on long-haul routes, in an undated photograph. <\/p>\n

American Airlines | Via Reuters<\/p>\n

The K-shaped economy is taking flight.<\/p>\n

American Airlines<\/a> CEO Robert Isom<\/a> said Wednesday that just 30% of its seats account for half of the company’s revenue, a proportion that has the Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier and competitors large and small ripping up existing airplane configurations to add more first-class and other higher-yielding options.<\/p>\n

“Those 30% of seats, they’re only going to grow in our fleet as the reconfigurations come on board as the new aircraft deliveries come on,” Isom said at a Morgan Stanley industry conference, referring to the carrier’s premium seat options.<\/p>\n

The airline earlier this month unveiled<\/a> a monster 70-suite business-class cabin on its largest aircraft, a Boeing<\/a> 777-300ER, with more planes still awaiting their remodeling.<\/p>\n

\"Why<\/p>\n

American had fallen behind its large airline competitors in profits. Isom has said that adding premium seating<\/a> to capitalize on higher-spending customers, a resilient and bright spot in air travel, is key, especially as airlines try to cover this year’s surge in fuel costs, their second-largest expense after labor.<\/p>\n

Even smaller and budget carriers like Allegiant Air<\/a> and JetBlue Airways<\/a> are adding upgraded seat options to appeal to those flyers.<\/p>\n

Isom told CNBC in June that the airline is also planning a revamp of its Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners and that new interiors on its 777-200s are also on tap. The carrier is set to order new wide-body aircraft this year, Isom said.<\/p>\n

Read more CNBC airline newsChoose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The main cabin of a retrofitted American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER used on long-haul routes, in an undated photograph.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[9178,4324,27187,21993,448,116,28,122,2922,2442,227786,132120,76892,271,112,212777,6145,2427],"class_list":["post-850139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-aerospace-and-defense-industry","tag-airlines","tag-american-airlines-group-inc","tag-boeing-co","tag-breaking-news-business","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-citigroup-inc","tag-fort-worth","tag-ishares-transportation-average-etf","tag-ishares-u-s-aerospace-defense-etf","tag-jetblue-airways-corp","tag-life","tag-markets","tag-robert-isom","tag-transportation","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}