We know that American Airlines is trying to once again become a bit more premium. In the summer of 2025, the airline rolled out pajamas and mattress pads in business class on some ultra long haul flights. There’s now a positive update, as American is now rolling out mattress pads on even more flights, so let’s go over the details of the flights on which you’ll find these amenities.
American improves Flagship business class amenities
In the summer of 2025, American rolled out pajamas and mattress pads in business class on flights to and from East Asia, the Middle East, India, Australia, and New Zealand. Both the pajamas and mattress pads are from Nest, and the pajamas come in size S/M or L/XL.
Eligible flights for the full amenities include those to Auckland (AKL), Brisbane (BNE), Delhi (DEL), Doha (DOH), Seoul Incheon (ICN), Shanghai (PVG), Sydney (SYD), Tokyo Haneda (HND), and Tokyo Narita (NRT). These flights are operated out of Dallas (DFW), Los Angeles (LAX), New York (JFK), and Philadelphia (PHL).
There’s now a great update, as American is expanding the flights with mattress pads. As of next week (late March 2026), American will roll out mattress pads on all international Flagship branded business class flights, as well as Flagship branded business class flights to Hawaii.
These amenities are offered in addition to slippers, dual-sided pillows, and duvets. As this change is described, “American is constantly collecting customer feedback to reinvigorate the travel experience with changes that align with customer needs.”
The rollout of this comes shortly after American introduced its new long haul business class seats. However, this soft product improvement is unrelated to which aircraft a flight is operated by. So you’ll get these amenities regardless of whether your flight features American’s new or old business class seats.
This is a positive change, and it isn’t too surprising
We know that American has been trying to improve in recent months. The airline is greatly lagging Delta and United when it comes to financials, and we’re definitely seeing a bit of a vibe shift at the moment.
American appointed Heather Garboden as Chief Customer Officer, and we’ve seen the airline announce it wants to become more premium and customer focused. We’ve started to see some positive changes, and many of those have simply been reversals of previously dumb policies. Each month, we seemingly see multiple positive changes.
For what it’s worth, American offered pajamas and mattress pads in business class on some long haul flights until the spring of 2024, at which point they were cut. So they made a comeback a little over a year after they were eliminated. However, now things are going to be better than ever on that front, with shorter flights also getting mattress pads.
While I wouldn’t say it’s the norm, a good number of airlines do offer pajamas in business class. For example, United offers pajamas on flights of over 14 hours, and also has the industry’s best business class bedding.
Arguably, American’s policy on pajamas will actually be more generous, since even the (relatively short) flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles will get pajamas. Meanwhile American will proactively offer mattress pads on a lot more routes than United, though United’s overall bedding setup is still spot on.
Bottom line
In the summer of 2025, American introduced pajamas and mattress pads on all flights to and from East Asia, the Middle East, India, Australia, and New Zealand. American has now taken this to the next level, though, and is adding mattress pads on most Flagship branded business class flights, including those to Hawaii.
It just blows my mind how much time American spends waffling on what kind of an airline it wants to be. But hey, things finally seem to be headed in the right direction.
What do you make of American’s business class developments for mattress pads and pajamas?