AN AIR OF REFINEMENT

American Airlines unveils loaded new suite seats for long-haul flights out of Houston

A new kind of seat is en route.

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Fort Worth-based American Airlines will be debuting fancy new premium seating for its long-haul flights that will include privacy doors, more storage space, and even an optional chaise lounge.

The new seating will be part of the airline's Airbus A321XLR and Boeing 787-9 aircraft, in the premium cabin only, with availability beginning in 2024.

American’s Vice President of Customer Experience Julie Rath says that "the arrival of new long-haul aircraft and the customized seat design of the Flagship Suite seats will offer customers a truly private premium experience on our long-haul fleet.”

The Premium Economy seat will afford more privacy and double the amount of in-seat storage space.

Premium seating on American’s long-haul fleet will grow more than 45 percent by 2026: American’s Boeing 787-9 aircraft will have 51 Flagship Suite seats and 32 Premium Economy seats, and the airline’s Airbus A321XLR aircraft will feature 20 Flagship Suite seats and 12 Premium Economy seats.

American will also retrofit its fleet of 20 Boeing 777-300ER aircraft to include Flagship Suite seats, as well as its 16 Airbus A321T fleet, and will continue to offer lie-flat seats on transcontinental routes departing New York and Boston along with its Northeast Alliance partner, JetBlue Airways.

Customers can share personal space can on the Boeing 787-9. The Boeing 787-9 Premium Economy seats feature headrest wings to increase privacy and larger inseat entertainment screens.

The Flagship Suite on the Boeing 787-9 offers more comfort with lie-flat seating and can also convert to a chaise lounge position.

The Airbus A321XLR will have 20 Flagship Suite seats when it is delivered in 2024.

Premium customers are getting perks galore such as newly redesigned Admirals Club lounges, the first of which will open at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport this fall. They'll feature branded elements and sustainable wood designs created by design company Teague that will be echoed on the aircraft for a seamless aesthetic experience. Because if there's one thing you don't want, it's to leave the scrumptious sustainable wood designs of your premium lounge only to enter a premium cabin bereft of all wood.

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HISTORY CORRECTED

Houston documentary maker helps correct biased Texas historical marker

Photo by Virginia Diaz-Laughlin

Medrano stands in front of the Karankawa marker while filming 'Truly Texas Mexican.'

It's not often that a film has an impact past the box office, but one documentary has helped tell the truth about the Texas Gulf Coast's long-disparaged Karankawa people.

For years, the Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend and the Karankawa Tribe of Texas have fought for a corrected Texas Historical Commission marker in Corpus Christi. Houstonian Adán Medrano’s 2021 film, Truly Texas Mexican, helped finalize a push that will lead to a long-due correction on July 25.

The old marker was plainly offensive. Not only did it say the Karankawa people had "gained a reputation for savagery," but it repeated the long-discredited claim that they practiced cannibalism — a contention born out of the colonial need to justify violence against the tribe.

Medrano, a San Antonio native who currently lives in Houston, became part of the fight when he stood in front of the marker and made a direct appeal to correct the sign.

"I call upon the historians who live in Texas to come up and stand up and say, 'Take this down. This is a lie,'" he said during a scene in Truly Texas Mexican.

Two of them heard the call. Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi history professor Dr. Peter Moore and historian Dr. Tim Seiter of the University of Texas at Tyler joined the years-long Indigenous effort following the film's release. Led by the Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend and the Karankawa Tribe of Texas, the academics helped research and draft a replacement that honors them as one of Texas' first peoples.

The marker not only replaces racist mythmaking with scholarship and tribal knowledge, it presents the fact that Karankawa descendants aren't a historical footnote but a living community still present in South Texas today.

Medrano's advocacy here continues his work with the T exas Indigenous Food Project, a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating the Indigenous foodways of Texas and the Americas. But in many ways it is a continuation of a career devoted to amplifying voices rarely heard in popular culture. In 1976, he founded San Antonio's CineFestival, now the nation's longest-running Latine film festival.

At 10 am on July 25, representatives of the Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend and the Karankawa Tribe of Texas will unveil the corrected marker, joined by Medrano. Visitors can find it at 6001 Ennis Joslin Rd.

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