Review: American Airlines First Class A321T Los Angeles to New York JFK

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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!!!!! =)