Anyone who has booked a middle seat knows the routine. Open the app, check the seat map, see nothing. Then you close it and do the same thing again a few hours later, until the flight leaves.
American is about to automate that. Under two features being added to its app, you'll be able to tell it what kind of seat you want, and it will move you when one opens up and let you know afterward. The second feature lets the airline's top two tiers reserve their free snack before the flight.
The Seat Feature
You set the parameters. You tell the app what counts as an improvement for you. That might be an aisle or a window, something further forward, or a row with an empty seat beside it. The airline watches the seat map for you and moves you when something matches.
Seats free up constantly in the days before departure, which is why the feature works at all. People get upgraded out of the main cabin and plans change. Itineraries get rebooked after delays, and the airline releases seats it was holding back. Most of those openings happen while you're asleep or at work.
United has run a version of this for a while, monitoring availability until 12 hours before departure. By mid-2024 the airline said more than 30% of customers who saved a preference ended up in the seat they wanted, which suggests these tools do more than they sound like they would.
The Snack Part
This one is narrower. Executive Platinum and ConciergeKey members, American's top two status tiers, will be able to preorder the free snack they get in the main cabin. The cutoff looks to be around 20 hours before departure.
It's a small thing, and it solves a real annoyance. Cabin crews work from the front, so passengers at the back of the aircraft often get whatever's left rather than what they wanted.
Using It Well
A few things worth knowing when the feature arrives.
- Be specific about what you want. A preference that accepts almost anything will move you for marginal gains. Aisle only, or forward of the wing only, produces better results.
- Set it as soon as you book. The longer the tool watches, the more openings it sees.
- Check where your seat sits before you accept an aisle anywhere. Row 30 on the aisle isn't obviously better than row 12 in a middle seat if you have a tight connection.
- Remember the rows that don't recline. Being moved in front of an exit row is a downgrade the app won't know about.
Why Airlines Want This
Seat selection has become one of the biggest sources of extra revenue in the industry, and airlines charge for the good ones. A tool that finds you a better seat for free might look like it works against that.
It doesn't, quite. Seats handed out this way are the ones nobody paid for, and the feature costs the airline nothing to run. What it buys is goodwill and time in the app, which is where airlines want their customers making decisions. Most big carriers will have something like it before long, because the ones that don't will look dated by comparison.
