American Airlines Will No Longer Send The 77W To Sydney From November

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In quite a surprising announcement today, American Airlines has said they will be taking their flagship 777-300ER off the daily Los Angeles – Sydney route and will be replacing it with a 787-9. The schedule will stay exactly the same.

This is quite a major move for the carrier. When they first announced services to Sydney, they heavily promoted their upgraded First Class experience, this was with help from Neil Perry and Qantas. However, the 787 doesn’t feature a First cabin instead it features 30 Business Class seats, 21 Premium Economy seats, 36 Main Cabin Extra seats and 198 Economy seats.

For passengers in Business Class, I consider the aircraft switch an improvement. The 787-9 features the airlines’ latest B/E Super Diamond seats. I’ve flown the product and found it excellent.

a seat in a plane

American Airlines 787-9 Business Class

This is now the second carrier to be flying Super Diamond seats to the United States from Australia, the first being Virgin Australia.

a group of people in an airplane

American Airlines 787-9 Business Class

Why Is American doing this?

Gary Leff from View From The Wing is reporting that the airline is doing this to show the DOT (Department of transportation) that they will stop offering large amounts of seats to and from the pacific. This is obviously to push them to accept the joint venture with Qantas.

Funnily enough this morning I wrote an article about how both airlines are drastically cutting the earning rates for EQM’s/Status Credits. It’s quite funny to watch the back and forward behaviour from both carriers and I’m interested to see if Qantas will pull out of anywhere or reduce capacity, maybe SFO?

I’m pretty sure both CEO’s aren’t smiling right now…

a group of people in a plane

Doug Parker and Alan Joyce in AA First (Image – Qantas)

It’ll be an interesting time ahead and I’m sure there will be a few unexpected surprises…

Featured Image – Qantas

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About the author

Zac has been obsessed with travel since the age of 2. Now flying 200,000+ miles per year and blogging about luxury travel. Points From The Pacific is a blog that posts about the latest airline news, insights, reviews and guides to help travellers use their points to travel in first and business class.

4 comments on “American Airlines Will No Longer Send The 77W To Sydney From November”

  1. Shaun

    Not surprisingly saver first class award availability will remain unchanged.

  2. Lance

    Am currently booked SYD-LAX for two in business mid Nov. This is going to be the first time flying AA biz period for my wife and I and we are really looking forward to it as we’ve just broken into the miles game. How should we look to handle change? Is the business product significantly different between the 787-9 and the 77w? Thanks for any insight!

    • Zac George

      Hi Lance, I’d actually keep the booking. As a comparison, the seats on the 77W are very similar to the ones on Cathay Pacific. The B/E Super Diamonds are a beautiful seat and I’d recommend them over the 77W. I wouldn’t cancel the booking as getting redemptions on the LAX-SYD-LAX are extremely limited.

  3. Andre Garcia

    While the B/E super Diamonds are indeed beautiful seats, I would not trade it for the 77W seats. The ones on the 787-9 have the coffin-like feeling for those who like to bend their legs up when laying down. I have flown on both and in my opinion the ones on the 77W are by a far a superior design.
    With that said, the cabin on the 787 with lower altitude pressure and higher humidity does make it a nicer plane for such a long flight.

    Also for those times when getting an upgrade isn’t possible it will be nice to at least get premium economy, haven’t flown in one of those yet, but I did sit in one for about 10min on my last flight to GRU, they were quite comfortable, than of course i went back to my seat 1L for some more coffin like sleep . 😉

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