Review of American Airlines flight New York → London in Business

return to asia

When China reopened this year, I knew I'd want to visit my extended family for the first time since before the pandemic, but timing was tricky with work, so it ended up being this was the earliest I could take the trip (and sufficient time off to make a trek to Asia worthwhile).  Compared 5 years ago, I'm less enthused about these kind of crazy routings try to different premium products, but this time I planned the trip around 1) a Cathay F award and originally a cheap fare out of Bangkok (that got delayed and forced me to re-route to get home in time).

The first part of this trip was done on a cash fare round-trip between JFK and LHR; combined with an Amex Offer for $300 off and the British Airways AARP discount.  After all the savings were factored in, it was more than a comfortable enough price for me.

This would be the first time I've flown on a OW business class and first time on an international premium cabin for a US airline other than United.

jfk terminal 8 premium check-in

I took an Uber to JFK fairly early, fearing a pre-Christmas rush of passengers on the roads that Friday, but it turned out to be a relatively quiet morning.  The premium check-in for American Airlines and British Airways can be found at the right end of Terminal 8.

It's simply a more quiet area to check-in that leads directly to the TSA Pre line (AA doesn't allow CLEAR at terminals it controls).

It was a pretty quick trip through TSA Pre–not many travelers that morning.

Walking into the terminal after security, you'll come across this cool American Airlines plane model.  The Greenwich lounge can be found to the left while the other two, fancier lounges are to the right.

Having absolutely no status in Oneworld, I turned left to the Greenwich Lounge, which can be found immediately up a set of elevators.

greenwich lounge jfk

Check-In was quiet with one gentleman who was very confused about what happened to the Admiral's Club that used to be here.

I was quickly checked in and welcomed to the lounge down a narrow corridor.  There are some seating here if the lounge is absolutely packed for whatever reason, but otherwise there is no reason to sit here.

The Greenwich Lounge is primarily one big room with various types of seating, a buffet area, and a self-serve beverage area.

There's also a quiet room immediately to your left after you enter.  I didn't even realize this room was here until I was on my way out of the lounge, so I did not stop in for a picture.

There are a lot of different types of seats, ranging from standard lounge chairs, counter seating, high-back chairs, and tarmac view lounge seats.  The last type were the most naturally and all occupied when I looked around.  Overall, the lounge had more people at 8:30am on a Friday morning than I expected, but there were plenty of open seats.

The Tasting Room and the Coffee Bar were closed until 10:30am according to a sign.

I settled down in one of the working booths.  While these were open, it was a pretty efficient use of space and comfortable to hammer out emails pre-flight.  One nice thing about the lounge throughout was the prevalence of outlets everywhere.

The WiFi speed of the lounge was rather lackluster, but enough to get basic emailing done.

The buffet area had a salad bar, some bread and bagels, and your standard hot breakfast: scrambled eggs, bacon, potatoes.  This is also where you can find the liquors and various other beverages like the coffee machines, beer, juices, etc.  There is also another coffee setup elsewhere in the lounge.

In the center of the lounge was a self-serve wine bar.  The Greenwich Lounge serves Piper Heidseick, which is decent enough for a business-class lounge.

I just grabbed a cappuccino and a small plate of a little bit of everything.

Before leaving the lounge, I checked out the restroom, which was clean and spacious.

The Greenwich Lounge has D.S. & Durga amenities.

I left the lounge about 15 minutes before boarding to make my way to Gate 4.

aa142

My flight to London was on N772AN, a 24 years old 777-200ER.

Boarding began on-time at 9:21, nearly 50 minutes before takeoff.  There weren't any Concierge Key members as far as I could tell, and then all the OW Emerald and business class passengers boarded next.

AA's 772s' newer business class is separated into two cabins.  The forward cabin has 5 rows of business (plus a single seat in its own row) and the back cabin has 4 rows arranged in 1-2-1.

Today I was on one of the AA 772s with the popular Super Diamond variant of the reverse herringbone seats.  I sat in 9L, the right-side window seat in the second to last row.

There's a good bit of storage for travel documents, chargers, and other similar small items.  The seat control was set in a touchscreen to the right of the seat and easy to use.  There's a standard reading light and two air nozzles.  I'll let most of the pictures for the seat speak for itself.

At boarding, a menu, headphones, the amenity kit, and a bottle of water were already waiting in the seat.

The IFE was crisp and responsive.  Nothing more to report.  Sorry for the angle, but I was trying to avoid as much of the reflection as possible.

You can see that there is a good amount of space in the footwell, though it narrows quite a bit towards the end.

I didn't notice this until a few minutes after I had sat down, but my seat was missing the bedding for some reason.  This was a day-time flight so I didn't even bother raising the issue: I didn't want to deal with the bedding taking up extra space in my seat when I was unlikely to bother using it.

The amenity is pretty basic, seen below.  I grabbed what I needed and did not keep the kit.

This is the one area where you can compare American Airlines business class with . . . Singapore First Class?  They both have Bang & Olufsen headphones, which are very nice.

Sandy was the flight attendant working the back starboard aisle.  She was wearing a Santa hat and I could tell immediately she was going to be great.  Sandy addressed me by name and offered a choice of predeparture beverages.  I went with champagne and was pleasantly surprised upon tasting it that it was actually champagne–I was under the impression that American had downgraded at least the predeparture sparkling option to prosecco.

The nifty part about sitting in row 9 was that it offered an unparalleled view of the beautiful engine and wing.

Boarding completed at 10:05am ET and we pushed back 4 minutes later, two minutes before the scheduled departure time.

We taxied for quite a while before taking off at 10:33am ET.

Here, you can see Long Island and the Atlantic Ocean beyond it.

Before takeoff, Sandy was busy taking orders from every passenger and stopped by my seat to confirm that I preordered the braised short rib.  I figured that I'd do a comparison with the UA short rib since I'm so used to that one.  Here's the pre-order menu.

Below is the menu.  If you compare it with the pre-order menu, it looks like the Harvest Vegetable and Grain Bowl and the Golden Roasted Chicken are not available as order-onboard options.  Recently, AA for whatever reason stopped printing the wine list and instead tells passengers to ask the FAs.  It seems quite unrealistic to expect FAs to memorize the wine list (specifically the actual producers, vintages, etc . . .).  

Service began began 20 minutes after takeoff with a hot towel.

Sandy and Jerry came with the beverage cart about 15 minutes later.  I had champagne, which I noticed was Duval Leroy Brut–a reasonable business class champagne.  Warm nuts and a glass of water were served alongside the champagne.

I didn't ask for the full wine menu as I didn't intend to drink much beyond this glass of champagne on this flight.  I overheard Jerry informing the passenger in front of me that for white wine they had chardonnay and sauvignon blanc available. 

Appetizers came next: salad and grilled Cajun shrimp.  It was passable, though I have no idea what was Cajun about the shrimp preparation.

Sandy stopped by with the bread basket shortly after appetizers were served and I selected pretzel bread, as is my preference when it's available.

The braised short rib was . . . okay.  It was tougher than what I'm used on UA and the sides were a bit hard.

I had the ice cream sundae afterwards.  No cart on AA, but Sandy asked what toppings I would like to go along with it.  I opted for a simple mix of nuts, hot fudge, and caramel.  The fudge wasn't hot and the ice cream was solidly frozen when I got it, but after it melted a bit it was pretty good.  I'm rarely ever going to complain about an ice cream sundae.

In all, service took about 90 minutes and my tray table was cleaned up sometime around 110 minutes to two hours after takeoff.

I checked out the lavatory afterwards.  I approve of the larger basin, but AA could really use a bit more amenities in the lavatory, even if it's just moisturizing lotion.

When returning to my seat, I realized that the aisle-side armrest not only goes up, but also doubled as a small storage for additional small items.

I watched movies and dozed in and out of sleep for most of the flight.  With about 80 minutes left inflight, Sandy asked if I wanted breakfast.  I always get a kick when airlines call it breakfast even though we were past 8pm GMT.  In any case, I tried the toasted croque monsieur sandwich.  It was decent, albeit too heavy given that I had just eaten a few hours before.

AA came around with its UNICEF donation bags with around 35 minutes left inflight and we began our descent into LHR 10 minutes later.  Sandy came by to thank all of the passengers in her aisle began landing–a nice gesture.

We landed at 9:35pm and arrived at our gate 11 minutes after a short wait–24 minutes early. 

We parked close to a Beijing Capital Airlines A330-300 that was preparing to depart for Qingdao (TAO).  I had no idea Beijing Capital Airlines operated long hauls much less a London route from Qingdao of all cities.

Compared to my previous LHR experiences, immigration was far faster and I was already at the taxi stand something like 15-20 minutes after deplaning.  Depending on the transit experience on my return flight, maybe I'll reconsider LHR as a connecting hub for Europe.