Pretty self explanatory. Why did AA go with cloth on the MD80 seats and DL leather (or fake leather)? I also remember flying early AA 737's with cloth. Both the MD80 and 737's had the "no smoking" etched in to the seats.

It was the 1990s. Nobody went with leather back then. Delta has refurbished it's MD80 cabins. American has not.

MAH4546 wrote:

American has not.

Because they knew the MD-80 aircraft would be removed from the fleet in a not too distant future.

American 767 wrote:

MAH4546 wrote:

American has not.

Because they knew the MD-80 aircraft would be removed from the fleet in a not too distant future.

Those seats have been around since at least 2005 when I started regularly flying AA and I suspect they go back as far as the late 90s when the 738s started delivery.

Those cloth seats on the AA MD-80 were VERY Comfortable. Unfortunately, they just don’t make them like they used to.

Swissair had leather on coach on narrowbody Airbus in '97 or '98, if not earlier.

I don’t think the seats them selves on American are that old- they had adjustable headrests and when I flew on an MRTC plane in the year 2000 or so the plane had very new looking seat covers and seats.

FriscoHeavy wrote:

Those cloth seats on the AA MD-80 were VERY Comfortable. Unfortunately, they just don’t make them like they used to.

Very true, leather seats on airliners are an
abomination and should be outlawed

Different eras of refurbishment. The AA S80 got the new interior upgrades in the late 1990s with cloth seating and blue leather adjustable headrests which was the same as the interior upgrades for the 763 and 762 and newly delivered 738, 777. Some A306s also had this interior as well. The MD-80s got this installation starting in 1998 and lasted until around 2000.

DL had the blue cloth pattern which was recovered with leather in the mid-2000s which was among the first aircraft type to get it and then standardized across the rest of the fleet.

Max Q wrote:

FriscoHeavy wrote:

Those cloth seats on the AA MD-80 were VERY Comfortable. Unfortunately, they just don’t make them like they used to.

Very true, leather seats on airliners are an
abomination and should be outlawed

I cut apart used cloth and leather seats and from then on preferred leather.

As an enthusiast, I'm more likely to pick a configuration I haven't tried...

Lightsaber

lightsaber wrote:

Max Q wrote:

FriscoHeavy wrote:

Those cloth seats on the AA MD-80 were VERY Comfortable. Unfortunately, they just don’t make them like they used to.

Very true, leather seats on airliners are an
abomination and should be outlawed

I cut apart used cloth and leather seats and from then on preferred leather.

As an enthusiast, I'm more likely to pick a configuration I haven't tried...

Lightsaber

Agreed 100%. Cloth seat covers harbor all sorts of nasty things. Leather is much more sanitary.

AA had the final interior on the Super 80 since at least 2000. DL didn't start redoing their cabins til 2006. DL is much more brand conscious than AA.

The original First Class seats on the AA MD-80s were leather.

How long has Southwest had leather seats? (Although, apparently the new ones are "E-Leather" which I presume means "fake").

AA was cheap in the 90s and is even cheaper now

[quote="umichman"]How long has Southwest had leather seats? (Although, apparently the new ones are "E-Leather" which I presume means "fake").[/quo
After the 80s

umichman wrote:

How long has Southwest had leather seats? (Although, apparently the new ones are "E-Leather" which I presume means "fake").

It is “engineered” leather.

For reference:

https://www.eleathergroup.com/

Max Q wrote:

Very true, leather seats on airliners are an abomination and should be outlawed

Yeah, no.

Cloth seats absorb. Disgustingly so. Including pests.

If anything for sanitary reasons, no airline should be using cloth.

Slip sliding away..

Better than itch itching away, because the previous a-hole pax had a lap-mutt with flees sitting on cloth seats.

Seen it happen.

Never had an issue with cloth seats, always preferable in terms of comfort

If it’s not clean all you have to do is ask the flight attendant for a new seat cushion, we provide them all the time


Leather is stiff, uncomfortable, doesn’t breathe and you slide around all night long


Truly a third world experience

MAH4546 wrote:

It was the 1990s. Nobody went with leather back then. Delta has refurbished it's MD80 cabins. American has not.

I did a bunch of flight on AS in the mid 90's, I can still remember how hard and uncomfortable those leather seats were.

umichman wrote:

How long has Southwest had leather seats? (Although, apparently the new ones are "E-Leather" which I presume means "fake").

Almost all “leather” seats found on airlines is actually fake leather. It’s cheaper and more durable than real leather.

Karlsands wrote:

umichman wrote:

How long has Southwest had leather seats? (Although, apparently the new ones are "E-Leather" which I presume means "fake").[/quo
After the 80s

When did they switch to the brown fabric seats?

AA only switched to leather seating in Y at the rebrand when the L-AA 319s were introduced.

Initially (similar to international carriers), Y seats on international aircraft were going to have cloth seating, while Y seats on domestic aircraft are going to have leather. The A321T fleet also had/has cloth seats in Y, as it is supposed to be an "international" experience. It was only when DP took over and around 2016 that they started ripping off the cloth seats in Y on international aircraft and replacing it with the e-leather.

It's a shame, because cloth is way more comfortable on long-haul IMO and the design for the L-AA Y fabric was quite contemporary and looked nice.

jetwet1 wrote:

MAH4546 wrote:

It was the 1990s. Nobody went with leather back then. Delta has refurbished it's MD80 cabins. American has not.

I did a bunch of flight on AS in the mid 90's, I can still remember how hard and uncomfortable those leather seats were.

Agreed. The leather seats nowadays cause you to slide around much more than older cloth. With that said, its much easier and quicker to clean leather seats than cloth

qfs wrote:

Agreed. The leather seats nowadays cause you to slide around much more than older cloth. With that said, its much easier and quicker to clean leather seats than cloth

I think I read somewhere (and to a certain extent I've made the observation myself) that for exactly that reason most airlines have cloth seats on their longhaul fleets while sticking to (faux) leather on shorthaul narrowbodies:

More legs per day means the seat has more potentially dirty bottoms planted onto it - leather is easier to clean.

On long hauls, where people spend hours in the seat, cloth is simply more comfortable - no sliding around the leather when you're trying to get some sleep and more breathable, meaning less sweat produced.

It's a matter of costs. Cloth is less expensive to equip and more expensive to maintain over the long run. Leather is more expensive to equip but you rarely have to remove the covers to clean them unless they just worn out and losing color. But they're easily cleaned. So Less expensive to maintain

lugie wrote:

qfs wrote:

Agreed. The leather seats nowadays cause you to slide around much more than older cloth. With that said, its much easier and quicker to clean leather seats than cloth

I think I read somewhere (and to a certain extent I've made the observation myself) that for exactly that reason most airlines have cloth seats on their longhaul fleets while sticking to (faux) leather on shorthaul narrowbodies:

More legs per day means the seat has more potentially dirty bottoms planted onto it - leather is easier to clean.

On long hauls, where people spend hours in the seat, cloth is simply more comfortable - no sliding around the leather when you're trying to get some sleep and more breathable, meaning less sweat produced.

You are correct.

European airlines for example, all have leather on their short-haul fleet but cloth on their long-haul. Unfortunately when US carriers switched to leather, they switched to leather on their entire fleet. AC also is going the European route, having leather seats on their new short-haul aircraft (A220, 737Max) while retaining cloth long-haul.

Another interesting observation, is that US carriers have made cloth-seating somewhat "premium" and still using cloth for their premium cabins (sans DL). UA's new Polaris product and AA's newest J and international F product all have fabric seating. Versus 20 years ago, Fabric seating was usually reserved for Y and Premium cabins received leather seating.

Leather seating is tremendously uncomfortable. While it is fine for short-haul, it starts to become uncomfortable during mid-con and trans-con flights. Fabric seating has always seemed so much more "plush" to me for some reason. Gross, maybe but 100% more comfortable.

lugie wrote:

On long hauls, where people spend hours in the seat, cloth is simply more comfortable - no sliding around the leather when you're trying to get some sleep and more breathable, meaning less sweat produced.

To each their own. I don't sleep naked on long hauls so material doesn't matter. I'd prefer clean leather to fabric that likely has bodily fluids I don't even want to think about in it.

Max Q wrote:

Never had an issue with cloth seats, always preferable in terms of comfort
If it’s not clean all you have to do is ask the flight attendant for a new seat cushion, we provide them all the time
Leather is stiff, uncomfortable, doesn’t breathe and you slide around all night long
Truly a third world experience

Nay, a first world experience & a first world problem
I see some "third world" expression thrown around showing little actual experience of the so-called "third world", in many ways more civilised.

In most cases, third world airlines do not use leather, probably because cloth is cheaper & easier to clean with vapour machines.
In the third world, most people don't normally hop on airlines like first world carbon polluters, they use train & buses - also polluting but less so considering the distances,benches are either true plastic ( looks like leather but way less confortable than e-leather ), or like in India, wooden benches, sometimes metal.

Ionosphere wrote:

AA had the final interior on the Super 80 since at least 2000. DL didn't start redoing their cabins til 2006. DL is much more brand conscious than AA.

2004 or so for DL's refurbishments. They had a few of the blue leather seats installed when I worked for DGS the first time. That was late 2004 through the first half of 2005.

jetwet1 wrote:

MAH4546 wrote:

It was the 1990s. Nobody went with leather back then. Delta has refurbished it's MD80 cabins. American has not.

I did a bunch of flight on AS in the mid 90's, I can still remember how hard and uncomfortable those leather seats were.

AS didn't get leather seats until the 2000's.

I was flying LAS-SEA-YVR once a month to get up to 100 Mile House on AS until 99 and the seats were some sort of leather.

Am I the only one here who doesn’t particularly mind leather seats? They give a feeling of a little touch more premium nature especially when you add some cross stitching ala BA embossed logo and Delta comfort+ not to mention the more sanitary feeling.

PresRDC wrote:

The original First Class seats on the AA MD-80s were leather.

What happens to the old First Class seats when they are replaced?

Insertnamehere wrote:

Am I the only one here who doesn’t particularly mind leather seats? They give a feeling of a little touch more premium nature especially when you add some cross stitching ala BA embossed logo and Delta comfort+ not to mention the more sanitary feeling.

I agree - some stitching and color goes a long way to make the product look and feel more premium:

Delta Domestic First:


Vs. AA Domestic First:

American 767 wrote:

MAH4546 wrote:

American has not.

Because they knew the MD-80 aircraft would be removed from the fleet in a not too distant future.

Yet as it turned out, it would only be a one year difference.

N649DL wrote:

Different eras of refurbishment. The AA S80 got the new interior upgrades in the late 1990s with cloth seating and blue leather adjustable headrests which was the same as the interior upgrades for the 763 and 762 and newly delivered 738, 777. Some A306s also had this interior as well. The MD-80s got this installation starting in 1998 and lasted until around 2000.

DL had the blue cloth pattern which was recovered with leather in the mid-2000s which was among the first aircraft type to get it and then standardized across the rest of the fleet.

I actually thought it started in 1999, I didn't realize the first S80 was refurbished in 1998. IIRC I saw a photo on here of a 727 with the refurbished interior, (I could easily find it with the previous photo search engine) yet AFAIK 757s didn't get refurbished until years after the 727 was retired, and some or all of them kept the original taupe leather F seats until they were replaced with J seats even later.

The interesting thing about DL is before 1995, no aircraft had ever had an interior refurbishment, except perhaps those acquired via mergers and acquisitions, but only where the previous airline(s) did it, they were not refurbished by Delta. (A former Western 727 looked much nicer inside than an original Delta 727 up until about 1997 or 1998 as did the former Pan Am Delta Shuttle). I actually think the 727s got redone before the M88. I am assuming the 757 was the last to get the new interior as I flew on the 763 with it in late 1998 and a 757 in late 2000 that had the original 757 interior. The L1011 refurbishment in 1995 was solid blue or gray seats in Y, whereas the rest of the fleet a few years later got refurbished with blue cloth seats with a design, but IIRC the headrest was a gray or taupe leather a few years later. Before the L10 refurbishment in 1995, every Delta aircraft type had a different interior (the 727 and DC9 may have been the same or at least similar).

Actually I forgot about the 737-200. Not even sure where Delta got them, but they had the same interior as the original 757 interior.

afcjets wrote:

N649DL wrote:

Different eras of refurbishment. The AA S80 got the new interior upgrades in the late 1990s with cloth seating and blue leather adjustable headrests which was the same as the interior upgrades for the 763 and 762 and newly delivered 738, 777. Some A306s also had this interior as well. The MD-80s got this installation starting in 1998 and lasted until around 2000.

DL had the blue cloth pattern which was recovered with leather in the mid-2000s which was among the first aircraft type to get it and then standardized across the rest of the fleet.

I actually thought it started in 1999, I didn't realize the first S80 was refurbished in 1998. IIRC I saw a photo on here of a 727 with the refurbished interior, (I could easily find it with the previous photo search engine) yet AFAIK 757s didn't get refurbished until years after the 727 was retired, and some or all of them kept the original taupe leather F seats until they were replaced with J seats even later.

The interesting thing about DL is before 1995, no aircraft had ever had an interior refurbishment, except perhaps those acquired via mergers and acquisitions, but only where the previous airline(s) did it, they were not refurbished by Delta. (A former Western 727 looked much nicer inside than an original Delta 727 up until about 1997 or 1998 as did the former Pan Am Delta Shuttle). I actually think the 727s got redone before the M88. I am assuming the 757 was the last to get the new interior as I flew on the 763 with it in late 1998 and a 757 in late 2000 that had the original 757 interior. The L1011 refurbishment in 1995 was solid blue or gray seats in Y, whereas the rest of the fleet a few years later got refurbished with blue cloth seats with a design, but IIRC the headrest was a gray or taupe leather a few years later. Before the L10 refurbishment in 1995, every Delta aircraft type had a different interior (the 727 and DC9 may have been the same or at least similar).

Actually I forgot about the 737-200. Not even sure where Delta got them, but they had the same interior as the original 757 interior.

The 732s were actually ADV variants delivered new from Boeing in the mid-1980s. They weren't nearly as old as the 732s at UA and CO. The DL 733s were from Western but eventually moved away from just SLC and flew routes like Allentown, PA to ATL by 2000-2001.

It was actually pretty shocking how late DL installed the new blue pattern Y interiors (and to be honest, that was just an estimate on my part.) If you look in the database, there was a variant of the blue pattern interior on newly delivered 738, 757, 777, 764 in 2000 with tan adjustable headrests which IIRC some were removed from the 738 / 757 when they recovered them to light blue leather in the mid-2000s. Before the late 1990s, DL had the ugly mismatched interiors, some of which existed on the L-1011 through retirement in 2001:

Here's a 757 with the headrests in 2000: https://www.airliners.net/photo/Delta-A ... %2BwNaAjU/

In 2001 I recall flying DL on EWR-ATL-Grand Cayman in which the M88 and 757 both had blue pattern interiors but the 757 had digital stereo outputs with the old mnemonic headphones which totally threw me off. During the 1990s I was used to flying CO, AA, UA which never had the mnemonic headphones so my Dad had to show me how to use it believe it or not.

In 2002, I flew DFW-HNL on AA with a 763 with new coach seats, old bulkhead patterns, and stereo headphones output but IIRC had analog controls. If I'm wrong about the controls, forgive me since this was almost 20 years ago when I was a teenager haha.

But the seat covers on DL in 2001 didn't look all that new at all, they looked well used. Hence why I say late 1990s but it seems they were installed quickly because most of the photos in 1999-2000 in the database had them installed (except really just the L-1011s.) - https://www.airliners.net/search?keywor ... =3&page=11