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There isn’t a better way to fly transcontinental
It’s true. There is only one airline that regularly operates a 3 cabin ( Economy, Business, First ) transcontinental route, and it’s American. In all honesty, the business class experience is so good I’m not really sure that First is necessary, but seats sell, and Miles ain’t complaining. On a recent trip to New York, Miles was able to redeem a business extra upgrade and fly in AA’s lie-flat, reverse herringbone, First Class from Lax to JFK. If you’d like to read more on redeeming business extra upgrades, or even what the heck business extra even is, read this post. Without further adieu, let’s check out Miles’ experience onboard American Airlines First Class A321T Los Angeles to New York.
The Deets:
- When: October 2017
- Where: LAX – JFK
- Flight: AA292
- Upgrade: Business Extra upgrade – Biz to First
American operates a 3 cabin plane on it’s transcon flight between LAX/SFO and JFK.
They’ll also be flying this plane between LAX and Boston later this year, but it won’t be sold as a 3 cabin route, and thus those sitting in the forward-most cabin won’t get the same experience.
Here’s how the plane is broken down.
As you can see in the featured image and below, the first class cabin consists of 5 rows with just 1 seat on each side.
The first class cabin utilizes similar seats to those found in business class on their 777-300ER- review here. One of the best in the sky . Also…you’re in group 1 to board. BYAH!
Here’s a look, side by side, at first and business.
Business (B/E Aerospace Diamond seats) is so good that the existence of First is almost unnecessary, but Miles was not complaining. In fact, other airlines (KLM, Ethiopian, etc) use this seat in their long haul business. Pretty incredible that AA went a step further and installed even better seats in first.
Amenity kit, storage, Bose headphones. Yes, please.
The Food
The scrambled eggs were phenom.
The Seat.
Private, reverse herringbone ( head out, feet in), storage, and proximity to where pets go during take-off and landing.
The special cabinet for pets.
Although ours didn’t stay in it for very long. Can you believe she had the audacity to try and boot Miles?
Overall:
An incredible and private seat with great service to boot. There aren’t many things to complain about with AA’s First Class on the A321T. This is a great use of a Business Extra upgrade, and something that would be worth looking into if routes through JFK open up again, like they did last year, to Central America. Makes a mileage run even more comfortable. Where are those $650 roundtrips from LAX-JFK-MIA-PTY at? Come back!!!!! =)
Those eggs do look much better than the standard rubber omelette served on 99.9% of carriers lol.
Did you do it as part of LAX-JFX-MIA-PTY? If so, what business class ticket type was it so you can upgrade?
No this was done on one leg of a r/t between LAX and JFK. Aside from award tickets, any business class fare bucket should be eligible for a bxp1 upgrade.
We got to fly this from JFK back to LAX a while ago. We were returning home from Europe(LHR). Our original flight was supposed to be LGA-DFW-LAX but that flight had problems, we were booked in Business for the return. The gate agent at LGA arranged for us to be shuttled to JFK on their dime and she upgraded us up to the front. We got to JFK with enough time to check out the lounge. We boarded any my partner fell asleep quickly, I wanted to enjoy the product and service. You’re right, it’s a nice seat and the service is pretty amazing too. I hope we can swing another upgrade like that again.
TonyM – Sounds amazing!
Looks like you monkey dudes had a fun trip…nice!
I’ve flown AA 321T F and concur of course, was pretty nice for sure. I haven’t tried JB Mint yet but would suggest that could be a better way to transcon it? A proper suite, nicer crews probably, perhaps better food. Don’t you agree from the looks of those?
Hey Andy – I haven’t flown JetBlue Mint so I couldn’t compare, but the mini suites do look very nice; however, they are only in rows 2 and 4 so not everyone gets that experience unfortunately. I think it would be a good argument tho to compare the two head to head
Please fly B6 Mint and report back!!
would love to! I’ll put it on the list for 2018 🙂