United Airlines Has Hundreds of Lie-Flat Business Class Seats Sitting in Storage That It Doesn’t Know What to Do With

United Airlines chief executive Scott Kirby has admitted that the airline has hundreds of lie-flat Business Class seats gathering dust in deep storage, and the Chicago-based carrier has no idea what to do with them, because its fleet plans have changed so drastically since the seats were delivered.

Kirby, who was the president of United at the time the seats were ordered in 2018, had approved the purchase as part of the carrier’s plans to install lie-flat Business Class seats on Boeing’s yet-to-be-approved Boeing 737MAX-10 – the highest-capacity variant of the troubled MAX family.

The planes were meant to replace United’s aging fleet of Boeing 757s that operate premium transcontinental routes from the likes of Los Angeles and San Francisco to Newark Liberty, but major certification delays meant United had to go back to the drawing board.

By 2024, with no end in sight to the MAX-10 certification woes, United reportedly tapped Airbus to acquire additional A321neo narrowbody airplanes, specifically to plug the gap in its fleet plans from the MAX-10 fiasco.

In the next couple of months, United is expected to start operating the first of these additional A321neos, which have been dubbed the ‘Coastliner’. Up front, there are 20 new, all-aisle access lie-flat seats in United Polaris – the first narrowbody planes in the United fleet to get the ‘United Elevated’ treatment.

The new Polaris Business Class seats are not, however, the same seats that United had ordered for its 737MAX-10s. The reason, as Kirby revealed to CNBC, is that the seats destined for the MAX-10s simply won’t fit in an Airbus A321neo.

That’s not to say that they are too big. The Airbus A321neo actually has a wider cabin than the 737MAX-10, but considerations like the seat tracks and sidewalls can play a big part in whether a seat fits within a specific aircraft model.

Even the same seat model might actually have several variants so that it can fit in different aircraft types.

The problem that Kirby faces is that while United is planning to take delivery of the MAX-10s that the airline ordered, it no longer needs them for the premium transcontinental flights they were originally intended for. That means that these planes are most likely to be kitted out with standard First Class recliners up front, rather than lie-flat seats.

United might be forced to write off the cost of these seats, although don’t be surprised if the airline is also discussing the issue with Boeing in an attempt to get the troubled aircraft manufacturer to cover, at least some, of the cost.

The 737MAX-10 was going to be one of the last variants in the MAX family to be certified, although that process has taken years longer than originally envisaged.

Earlier this month, the 737-7 was finally certified after what the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) described as “years of sustained work to resolve complex technical issues and complete a thorough review of the airplane’s design and supporting safety analyses.”

Southwest Airlines is by far the biggest planned operator of the 737-7, although the carrier says it currently has no plans to include the aircraft in its schedule until some point in 2027 at the earliest.