Apr 20

Apr 20 Still Going - American Airlines Transcontinental

American Airlines, back in 2022, announced that they were upgrading their Flagship seats into a “new Flagship Suite premium seating’ on their Airbus A321XLR and Boeing 787-9 aircraft. Given this is the land where infrastructure upgrades take forever, American is expected to roll out their upgraded seats in 2025…hopefully. In the meantime, I thought it would be great to review this product, especially since I’ve flown it on both their JFK-LAX and SFO-JFK routes. And based on my previous experience with the “First Class” product, I can agree why American Airlines is not installing “First Class” products anymore on their new A321XLRs.

Booking

Flagship Business is on select, premium heavy routes, including between JFK and LAX / SFO and SNA, as well as between LAX and BOS / MIA. Besides being branded as “Flagship Business”, the A321T has little “Sharklets” to reduce drag.

Flight: AA 16

Departing: San Francisco (SFO)

Arriving: New York (JFK)

Operated by: Airbus A321 (Sharklets)

Cabin: Business Class

Check In and Lounge

One thing to look out for when departing SFO is that the ground Flagship experience is reduced when compared to checking out of JFK: there is no Flagship lounge, and TBH SFO can be a bit of a mess. The checkpoint in Terminal 1 was closed for no reason, and so everyone had to reroute to another Terminal.

While Alaska notes that one can go to their lounges on an American ticket, unfortunately that wasn’t the case. Thus, I made my way over to the Admirals Club in Terminal 1, a fairly standard Admirals Club, which is to say I wasn’t too thrilled. I would suggest the Centurion Lounge, which has much better food and drink.

I am giving them a bit of hard time: the lounge’s breakfast options were solid, especially the sausages they had. From 7-10AM, there was also a cart helping people build their own avocado toast. Take that millennials.

I will give points to American for how they have designed this lounge: the natural wood finishes, neutral colors and light make it feel like a place one could stay in for a bit. There also are showers, although you’d need to speak to an attendant to use them in most cases.

As an FYI, this is the food typically offered at America lounges during lunch / dinner. Not great.

One thing I didn’t realize that that one could enter Flagship Lounges upon landing as well. I have review the Flagship Lounge in my last post, but see below for the updated food selection No changes to the drink selection have been made, thankfully there still endless Piper-Heidsieck to partake.

Overall, Flagship Business’s lounge access is incredibly generous, especially given the ability to enter Flagship Lounges on arrival. Just make sure to fly out of an airport with one of those though!

The Seat

I was once again foiled by the jetbridge, and couldn’t get a picture of the A321T.

Upon boarding, one has to first walk through the First Class seats:

Nothing has changed in First Class from my last review in 2023, except that American has added new amenity kits; this is for the better, given the one I got was extremely lackluster, and probably should have belonged in business class. There are 10 First Class seats, which means that Business class starts at seat 6A, which was the one I was sitting in.

While the First Class seats are in a 1-1 configuration, the Business Class seats are in a 2-2 configuration, and total 20 overall. The annoying thing about that is that one must go over your other passenger to use the restroom. However, this is a full lie-flat seat, so one must not complain!

At the seat was a mattress pad, amenity kit, Bang & Olufsen headphones and a menu.

My hot take is that I don’t get why everyone hypes up Bang & Olufsen headphones - they’re good, but not incredible.

American’s screens are quite nice, although you can see from the pictures in need of a bit of cleaning.

Below that is the cubbyhole, which was comfortable for this 5’10 person.

The seat controls are located in this middle “island”, as well as the thick tray table. Note that in the future, the suites will be enclosed, and so this configuration will thankfully go away.

For an International Business Class seat, this is woefully uncompetitive. But for a Domestic seat, especially when the competition is this (United First, with American First similar), the seat is incredible.

Meal Service

The flight attendants came around with a pre-departure drink, with the choices of sparkling wine, water or orange juice. After takeoff, they again came around with a hot towel, and then commenced the drink service. Warm nuts were served with drinks as well.

Notice I said sparkling wine? American has Ferrari Brut Trentodoc as its new drink, which to be honest I wasn’t a fan of.

The flight attendants were efficient, taking meal orders before takeoff, and serving the meals as soon as the fasten seatbelt sign was off. This may have been to make up for our hour long delay though!

The salad was terrible, even for a pure veggie option, 3/10.

However, the Short Ribs saved the day, even better than the one I had on Emirates First Class (yes, I know). 8/10.

Finally, the meal was topped off by some incredible icecream sundaes, 9/10. Then more snacks came, firstly in the form of a snack basket. I love those little thin cookies they provide, 7/10.

Then, about 4 hours into the flight, the hot cookies came out. Wonderfully sugary, 7/10.

Despite the disappointing starter, the overall meal was surprisingly good for a US airline.

Amenities

At least Flagship Business provides an amenity kit, which was similar to the amenity kit on my previous American Airlines First Class flight.

The kit was fairly standard, with socks, eye masks, lotion, lip balm, earplugs and dental kit. And while not technically part of the amenities section, I took a peak at the washroom, which was similar to an Economy Cabin’s washroom.

The Service

Hot take here: I actually don’t think American Airlines has that bad of a service? At least I’d put it ahead of Cathy Pacific and Swiss Airlines, two airlines that are always raved about. The crew was efficient and helpful, and most importantly didn’t make it seem like passengers were a burden. Note this is an average review over 3 American business class flights. Not to say the service was fantastic like on Emirates.

The Point

This is pretty bad if we were comparing it to trans-oceanic flights, but pretty good for transcontinental flights. Passengers would get access to some wonderful lounges, ones which ordinarily would be set for international flights. The seat, while aged, offered the opportunity to lie flat, which is 80% of the benefits of business class. The food wasn’t too bad! And while the amenity kit was pretty terrible, I was happy to be getting one in the first place. Is it worth the price tag? Depends on how much you get it for, but certainly this is a better deal than First Class, which can sometimes be worth twice the price!

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Opinions expressed are solely the writers and do not express the views or opinions of their employers