American Eagle Regional Jets Get New Interiors, Power Ports, Fast Wi-Fi

While we’ve had reason to believe this was coming, American Airlines has just announced plans to update the cabins of its regional aircraft, operated by American Eagle. While largely cosmetic, I’m looking forward to these changes.

In addition to new interiors, American has been rolling out high speed Wi-Fi on American Eagle planes since late 2023. As of now, the airline has added this service to around 300 regional aircraft, and installation is expected to be complete by early 2026. Keep in mind that American also plans to introduce free Wi-Fi for AAdvantage members as of January 2026.

American is also working with Embraer on designing larger overhead bins, creating more room for bags, and making the boarding process smoother. There’s no timeline for that yet, though, and we can simply expect this to be rolled out in the coming years.

Here’s how Heather Garboden, American’s Chief Customer Officer, describes these updates:

“Our customers value staying connected in the air, even on a relatively short flight. We’ve been working diligently to ensure our regional fleet offers the best and most reliable high-speed connectivity, especially as we look ahead to free Wi-Fi in 2026.”

American has the largest regional subsidiary of any of the “big three” US carriers, so the airline has a huge fleet of these Embraer planes. While I’ve very much enjoyed flying these planes, the catch is that most of these planes haven’t historically featured fast Wi-Fi or power ports. So if you add those factors, plus a fresh interiors, these might just be the most pleasant non-wide body American planes to fly.

The icing on the cake is that these planes have the highest ratio of first class to economy seats of any plane in the fleet, with 12 first class seats and 64 economy seats, meaning that 16% of seats are first class. That compares favorably to 737s, for example, which have 16 first class seats and 156 economy seats, meaning that 10% of seats are first class.

So the extent that complimentary elite upgrades are still a thing, these regional planes give you the best odds…

Bottom line

American Airlines will be updating the cabin interiors of its regional jets, operated by American Eagle. While the airline is already in the process of introducing high speed Wi-Fi (which should be available on all planes by early 2026), we’re now going to see the planes get new cabins and power ports at every seat.

A great solo travel tip spotted this week on One Mile at a Time.