Rollingthunder: Don't see any mention of that extra room on the AA website anymore. Gone with the wind?
Precisely so. Because fares would have had to have risen to pay for it. They didn't, so the concept became uneconomic and they had to remove it.
As good a real life demonstration as you could wish of the proposition that if you take out 10% of the seats, per pax revenue will have to rise by 10% just to keep revenue the same - which broadly translates into an average fare rise of 10%.