Review of American Airlines flight from New Orleans to Charlotte in Domestic First

quick turn in nola

The quirks of the work trip meant I had to take the last possible flight back to DC, which meant a non-direct connecting in CLT. This turned out to be quite the hassle as storms in New Orleans meant we couldn't take off (and as such I was going to miss my connection in CLT). In hindsight, I absolutely should have just deferred this to the next day and flew the 6am direct from MSY to DCA. Oh well.

I was rushing to return my rental car after finishing up work and was hoping to barely make my flight. The MSY rental car situation is terrible, it's a 20+ minutes bus ride from the airport to the rental car garage. Not sure why it's built so far away.

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I managed to scramble to my gate in time for what would have been boarding (6:09pm CT). Unfortunately, thunderstorms had delayed all departures from MSY. After waiting for around 40 minutes, I realized I was going to miss my connection in CLT and started considering other options. I should have just switched my flight to the 6am direct to DCA the next morning, but I thought it might be easier to get to CLT first in case of anything going wrong the next morning. More importantly, just as I was on the phone with the AA agent discussing changing my flight, they began boarding my flight at 7:14pm CT. I was even a little hopeful that if the flight out of CLT was delayed a bit, I might make the connection.

In any case, my ride to Charlotte was on N978UY, a 10-years old A321-200. 

AA has 5 rows of 2-2 domestic first class recliners on their A321s.

I was seated in 2F for this flight. 

I don't think any of the US mainline recliner seats really distinguish themselves from one another except for the availability of IFE screens.  AA has no screens, but I do appreciate the open up storage space on the side.

Unfortunately, the boarding was a mirage because we ended up just sitting on the plane for about an hour before finally pushing back at 8:20pm, more than an hour after boarding started.  We ended up taking off at 8:35pm.  I knew there was no chance of catching the connection in CLT at this point and was kicking myself for not changing to the next-day flight.

The lavatory on the A321 was very standard, not much to comment on here.

Service began about 30 minutes after takeoff with beverage orders. I needed a drink after the day that I've had.

One thing that I think could have been improved was that they could have offered PDBs to first class during our long wait. That was a missed opportunity. 

More surprisingly, there was no meal service whatsoever. We got a bag of mixed nuts. I would be quite annoyed if it wasn't work paying for the flight.

We began a very bumpy descent at 10:27pm ET and landed at 10:54pm.  We were at our gate 10 minutes later.

For those of you who were wondering, AA did offer a meal and hotel voucher proactively. Additionally, because I was rebooked in economy for my flight the next morning, AA also proactively refunded the difference in that ticket.