Uncategorized

A guide to which business class you’ll get on a retrofit AA 777-200

an airplane parked on a tarmac

We may receive a commission when you use our links. Monkey Miles is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com and CardRatings. This relationship may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Monkey Miles is also a Senior Advisor to Bilt Rewards. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.


There are 2 different seats. I’ve flown both. Here’s you can tell which you’ll get.

If you’ve done much flying on American you already know that their business class seats come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Luckily, these will be all retro-fitted to lie flats by sometime in October, but the 772, in particular, will continue to operate two different retro-fitted products. Originally the contract was with Zodiac. The reviews weren’t great once the seat was put into operation and AA canceled their order and placed a new one with B/E Aerospace for a fantastic seat called the Super Diamond. Depending on the route, you could end up with the Zodiac or the Super-Diamond. Here’s a helpful, simple guid to which business class you’ll get on a retro-fit AA 777-200.

The clear and simple way to tell is by the seat map.

Here are the two different seats.

This is the seat map for the Zodiac ( from an LAX-LHR route) booking on the AA website.

This is the first retro-fit that AA installed on their 772. I reviewed it last year from London to Chicago and enjoyed it quite a bit. I noticed none of the complaints of others.

  • As you’ll see below. Pay attention to the rear business class cabin. There are 6 rows. This signifies the first retro-fit.

If you use Seat-guru it’ll look like this…

  • Notice how there are 5 rows in the forward cabin in a 1-2-1 arrangement with one seat in the 6th. This is followed by 6 rows in the rear cabin all 1-2-1.
  • Some of these seats face backwards
  • Notice the Economy cabin. Configured 3-3-3. This is the 1st retro-fit economy. The later one is a dreadful 3-4-3

a diagram of a business chart

Again you will get this seat:

This is the business class seat map for the Super-Diamond. An incredible seat and cabin.

Two cabins. The first has 5 complete rows of 1-2-1 and 1 loner seat in 6. If I were flying alone I’d most certainly snag that seat. The rear cabin is 4 rows ( 7-10) all configured in 1-2-1. Personally I think the forward cabin is more private as the rear cabin is separated from coach with a curtain. I walked through a couple times and the noise isn’t filtered as much as I’d like.

If you use seat guru it would look like this.

  • If you look at economy…you can see that it is laid out 3-4-3. This automatically means its the newer retro-fit

a screen shot of a chart

You will get this seat.

Quick Recap:

  • Check the difference in the rear business class cabin. If it goes to row 12 then you’ll get the old cabin
  • If the economy cabin is 3-4-3 then you’ll have the newer super diamond seats in business class

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

a blue credit card with lines and symbols

Learn More

 Affiliate link 

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card


4.8
4.8/5
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based including Hyatt, Southwest, United, IHG, and Marriott.

Welcome Offer

60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months

Annual Fee

$95

Points Earned

Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards

  • 3x on dining
    •  including eligible delivery services for takeout
  • 3x on select streaming services
  • 3x on online grocery purchases
    • (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
  • 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel Portal
  • 2x on all other travel
  • $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Chase Travel
    • The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
  • 10% Anniversary Bonus
    • Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
  • Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
  • Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
  • Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
    • Primary rental car coverage is my favorite

We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.

Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.

Main Cast: 

Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.

Supporting Cast:

Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on. 

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.

If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners

Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.

The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

6 Comments

  • […] wrote a guide as to how you can figure out which retrofit 777-200s will feature the Super Diamonds, and which will feature the seats that have had rocking problems. Apparently, that guide […]

  • Christopher January 2, 2018

    The seat maps for both configurations look identical after AA installed premium economy on the 777-200’s, so this no longer works. Both configs have the same number of seats in J and Y.

  • JohnDCA September 30, 2017

    Seat Guru seems to show rear-facing seats for Super Diamond. Aren’t they all forward-facing?

    • Miles September 30, 2017

      Hey John – Yes, they are all forward facing

  • dk September 30, 2017

    You do know that AA has more that the 2 versions of J with Zodiac and Super Diamond. They have some 777-200’s with 37 J seats and some with 45 J seats. I believe there are 5 configs on the 777-200’s in the fleet.

    • Miles September 30, 2017

      dk – send me links – i’ve only ever seen two retro fit configurations as shown above 37/45. There is a 3rd configuration pre-retro that I didn’t include as the post focuses on the new cabins

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.