Review of American Airlines flight Kailua → Los Angeles in Economy

After a wonderful 7 days at the Fairmont Orchid on the Kohala Coast of the big island of Hawaii, my vacation was coming to a close. I arrived at Kona International Airport around 12:45pm for my 2:28pm flight back to Los Angeles. As I stepped out of the rental car into the blistering heat, I came to dread the inevitable wait in Kona Airport’s open-air terminal. After a fifteen or so minute wait for the Dollar shuttle and the subsequent short ride to the terminal, I found myself greeted by a dilapidated AA checkin kiosk, the screen barely visible with the sun in the background.

As I printed the boarding passes, I noticed something odd; I was the only member of my party to receive precheck. While making the reservation for this trip, I made sure to include everyone’s trusted traveler numbers, but alas American had different ideas. After a quick jaunt through the rudimentary security facilities and being explosive-tested by a rather grouchy TSO, I waited around 20 minutes for the rest of my party to exit the lengthy regular security line.



As cooler than average temperatures and a gentle breeze presented themselves, I ended up finding KOA’s outdoor terminal to be quite refreshing. Despite the smell of the crisp Hawaiian air mixed with Jet-A (any avgeek’s dream), I noticed that the airport was bursting at the seams with sunburnt vacationers, obviously operating over its desgined capacity. This theme prevailed throughout my experience in the airport, from the cramped restaurant to the archaic gate design. After about 45 minutes of wandering, my flight was called to board from gate 7A.



The AS flight to SAN was boarding from our same gate at the same time, and the gate agents were obviously frustrated trying to segregate the passengers based on their destination. I soon escaped the boarding area chaos and onto the tarmac for one of my favorite things about KOA, boarding from airstairs.



I proceeded up the stairs and was greeted by my ride today, an AA A321S, reg. N118NN delivered in July 2014. Having booked my outbound flight to KOA on a UA 753, I booked this leg on a new AA A321 specifically to try out the new hard product. I had flown it’s almost identical counterpart, a newly delivered 738, in April 2014 on BZE-DFW, and wanted to see how the two products compared.



At first glance, the only thing different between the new 738 and A321 interiors seemed to be the differing overhead bins (sky interior vs. airbus factory interior); however, the subtle differences made themselves clear throughout the flight.

As I sat down in my leather-clad seat, I first noticed the cleanliness of the cabin. Despite this airframe being almost a year and a half old, the seats and lavatories were kept in immaculate condition. The seat padding was adequate, with the cushion being exceptionally well padded for a slimline seat. The back was quite firm but not to the point that it was uncomfortable. Despite the increased width of the Airbus fuselage, the seats appeared to be the same width as on the 738, a less than ideal 17.2 inches. As boarding finished, the FAs closed the door and we pushed back at 2:29PM HAST, one minute past schedule. Our taxi included views of the large number of private jets parked on the apron, including a BBJ (reg N737KA).




Holding short for less than a minute, our takeoff roll began at 2:39PM HAST and used nearly all of KOA’s 11,000 foot runway, expected for a fully loaded A321. Sitting on the left side of the plane, I was unable to get a view of the big island’s fantastic scenery, instead only presented a glimpse of Haleakala, the 10,023 foot tall volcano that composes the island of Maui and one that I had biked down during my previous visit to the Hawaiian Islands in 2011.



The rest of the flight was devoid of much scenery, save for a spectacular sunset around midway between Hawaii and the mainland. I watched several programs on the individual IFE and found it to be quite responsive. There are several movies available for a fee, including many still in theaters.



As the flight progressed, I began to notice some of the shortcomings of the new slimline seats. The armrests are very low and narrow and do not raise on the window side, making it hard to contort into a comfortable position for very long. In addition, there is a rather large IFE box under the seat, reducing foot and carry-on room by a decent amount. The tray table folded out in two sections, providing a handy drink tray for the beverage service. It also slid out a decent amount, which was necessary for the use of a laptop, as I found mine barely fit when the seat in front of me was reclined.

The seat recline was decent and made use of the reclining seat pan feature commonly seen on Delta planes. Beverage service occurred twice during the flight, each time a whole drink can being handed to each passenger. Despite the recurrent seat-kicking and crying from the baby seated behind me, I found the seats and cabin of AA’s new A321S to be comfortable for a 4.5 hour flight.



A little under four hours into the flight, the coastal cities of Santa Barbara and Ventura came into view as we passed through 20,000 feet in our descent. At 8:45PM PST, we entered the SADDE6 approach from the VTU waypoint near Point Mugu. A scenic tour of the southern California coastline ensued, providing glimpses of the Santa Monica mountains and the San Fernando valley. We turned onto final for runway 24R over the LA river as we passed through 3,000 feet.



We landed at 9:01PM PST, concluding one of the smoothest descents into LAX I’ve experienced in a while. The flight was only 4:22 in duration, no doubt due to the strong tailwinds we experienced over the Pacific. We taxied to a remote gate as we were 40 minutes early and disembarked via bus, where I was able to get some great shots of heavies at the TBIT.



We then disembarked the bus onto the tarmac and were guided to the terminal by ramp personnel along a cone walkway. The walk to baggage claim was short, but my bag did not appear for close to 45 minutes. Walking outside, I was faced with the stale and polluted Los Angeles air and a daunting taxi line. Close to an hour and a half after landing I was finally in a cab and on my way home.