Wife and I heading down to Brazil tonight on an AA MileSAAver award.
We connect in Miami to head to Salvador, hoping that empty middle seat will hold!
The road back from Sao Paulo to New York JFK is on a 777 with 2-5-2 seating. Yikes! Imagine being in that middle seat? Some steely couples perhaps claim both aisles and hope the 3 interior seats stay clear, but that is taking a big chance. If it stays like this, it will be one of those awkward pre-takeoff periods where people look seat to seat, trying to avoid eye contact, trying to time the move just after people have finished boarding but before anyone else realizes boarding is finished.
We usually take the window and aisle on a 3-3 configuration, too, and then give either the window or the aisle to the middle-seater when there is one (planes have been so full on UA this year, so there is usually always one).
On the 2-5-2, that is like those planes going to China.
Have a great trip!
Have a good trip.
I’ve had to travel in the middle seat of the 2-5-2 on American and its not as bad as you think. For one, the 2 seats next to you have a large box under their seats that restrict their legroom and underseat storage. In addition you get service from both aisles so you get your food and drinks faster and the garbage gets removed sooner. Obviously it isn’t as good as a window or aisle but if I was stuck in one of the middle seats again, I would totally go for that seat!
We usually take aisle an aisle on single aisle planes. So 22 C and D look great.We’d probably gamble on row 39 on the retrun. Take both aisles and see what happens…
@The Weekly Flyer – the risk is she only accepts windows and only me or empty next to her, playing the double aisle game is high-stakes for me.
@snuggliestbear – that’s good to know, the video boxes can ruin otherwise decent seeming seats, though if I were in the middle of that I sure wouldn’t be drinking tea.
At least if you had to use the bathroom frequently you could exit a different direction every other trip.
Nope, the worst seat is going to be when they get the 777 with 10 seats across.
What was AA thinking – or not thinking? It is still two aisles, so why not 3-3-3? There must be a reason, but I have no clue. Any ideas?
Why is 2-5-2 (marginally) better than 3-3-3? Look at it this way, in a 2-5-2 configuration there’s only one passenger that has to cross more than one other passenger to reach the nearest aisle. In a 3-3-3, there are two.