How To Find Flights With Lie-Flat Seats on American Airlines

When it comes to flying in a premium cabin, there’s no better seat than one that turns into a bed! Whether you’re flying cross country or across the globe, a lie-flat seat allows you to stay comfortable, get some rest, and be refreshed so you can hit the ground running when landing.

It can be hard to find which American Airlines flights contain lie-flat seats, aside from obvious routes like New York to Los Angeles. This guide will show you what you need to look for and where so you can fly the most comfortable planes to wherever you’re headed.

Which Planes Have Lie-Flat Seats?

Of the U.S. carriers, American Airlines flies the fewest wide-body planes with lie-flat seats. So, you have to be strategic about selecting your plane if you want a better flying experience.

In the American Airlines fleet, only these planes have lie-flat seats in business class or first class:

• Airbus A321T, which only flies from New York (JFK) to Orange County (SNA), Los Angeles (LAX), and San Francisco (SFO), and Boston (BOS) to Los Angeles (LAX)
• Boeing 777-200 and Boeing 777-300ER
• Boeing 787-8 and Boeing 787-9

The latter 2 aircraft primarily fly international missions, but they also occasionally travel on domestic routes.

How To Find Lie-Flat Seats on American Airlines

One little-known trick for finding better seats is using the American Airlines Cargo website. When shipping cargo, shippers prefer to use wide-body planes. Not only can you fit more cargo on these aircraft, but the planes tend to serve destinations where cargo shipments can only be flown on these larger planes (such as Europe or Australia, for example).

Knowing that all American Airlines wide-body aircraft have lie-flat seats in business class makes the search process very easy. All you need to know is which routes and flights are served by wide-body flights.

Go to the American Airlines Cargo website, click the Ship tab at the top, and then Schedules.

From there, you’ll see a variety of schedule listings, sorted by domestic and international flights. On the left side, you’ll see a master schedule for the current month. Depending on when you are looking, you may find future months listed here as well.

Of particular interest in this document is the wide-body schedule on domestic routes. Long-haul international routes, like Dallas (DFW) to London (LHR), are always operated by larger aircraft and, therefore, always have lie-flat seats. Domestic flights, on the other hand, are mostly operated by smaller aircraft with recliner (not lie-flat) seats, so seeking out a larger aircraft with these lie-flat seats can be a challenge but extremely rewarding for a rare ride in a much more comfortable seat on a domestic route.

Looking at the sample schedule here, you’ll see a whole number of routes that are rarely operated by larger aircraft. Take, for example, Los Angeles (LAX) to Dallas (DFW) (the bottommost flight on the right in the above image). On most dates, this is operated by a Boeing 737 or Airbus A321 with recliner seats. However, on October 25, there’s a single flight operated by a Boeing 777-300ER plane featuring lie-flat seats.

Or you can see that Dallas (DFW) to Philadelphia (PHL) from October 7 to October 25 is flying a Boeing 787-8 daily at 12:30 p.m. If I wanted to fly this route, I’d most certainly choose this plane over all others thanks to the additional comfort afforded by the better seats and the fact that this plane handles turbulence significantly better than smaller aircraft.

If you’d rather just search for a route on a particular day, you can use the American Airlines website, type in your origin, destination, and date, and look at the search results for the blue banner indicating Lie-Flat seats available.

Some routes, like JFK to Heathrow, are always be operated by a wide-body aircraft and always have lie-flat seats in business class. You may see the blue banner indicating Flagship available, which means that this plane offers American’s signature Flagship service. This is marketing-speak for lie-flat seats and upgraded catering, something that is a staple on long-haul international routes.

You can also look at the aircraft listed under the departure and arrival times. American only operates lie-flat seats on wide-body aircraft and the A321T (which only operates select routes).

Final Thoughts

Flying in a lie-flat seat is the most comfortable way to travel. You can rest up, relax with a few movies, or even doze off for a great night of sleep. On American Airlines, there are several ways to look for these better seats, including American’s cargo website or by looking at icons on the main search page.

If you have the opportunity to book a lie-flat seat, do it! It will be a much better traveling experience!