Review of American Airlines flight from Phoenix to Salt Lake City in Economy

A visual of my entire journey from Barcelona to Salt Lake city via Atlanta & Phoenix which would cover a total distance of 6678 mi/10748 km. 

This trip report will cover the third and last leg of this journey.

Introduction

Welcome back to another trip report! This is that last part of my winter 2024 Spain TR series on DL/AA that began in Barcelona and across the Atlantic ocean to my hometown of Salt Lake City via Atlanta & Phoenix. If you want to get more context on how this trip came to be, I encourage you to read my previous TR where I discussed it there.
I'll begin here at Phoenix Sky Harbor international airport and after a rather quick overnight layover it was time to head over and check-in for my flight. For this last flight back to my home town of SLC I'll be flying American which operate out of T3. 

Check-in

Upon entering the check-in hall I quickly spotted the AA desks.

AA has many early morning flights out of PHX (as early as 5am) and even now at 3am there's already a lengthy queue to drop off bags. Luckily I'm just traveling with hand luggage.

I quickly made my way to the self kiosks to get a physical boarding pass and with that I'm all set to proceed to security control.

Security control was a breeze with no line at this early hour and with my TSA pre-check I was airside in just under 5 minutes.

My flight this morning will be AA2386.

My aircraft

Fast forward an hour later and I managed to capture my Boeing 737-800 arriving into the gate from it's first flight of the day that began in Des Moines (DSM).

Some information about my plane:
Flight number: AA 2386
Aircraft: Boeing 737-832
Registration: N992NN
Delivered: May 20, 2016 
Age: 8 years (at time of flight)

This 737 is configured into two cabin classes which are 16 domestic first and 156 main cabin seats (of those are 24 main cabin extra) for a total capacity of 172 seats. (seat map courtesy of aerolopa)

The gate area just before boarding.

Boarding

Boarded began right on time and I boarded along with group 6.

Welcome aboard into the main economy class cabin.

Seat

Here's my seat for the short journey north to SLC, 28A.

Window alignment and view from this seat is great!

There are no PTVs on AA's narrow body mainline fleet but they do have an impressive selection of IFE via on your own device which I'll talk about in depth once we are in flight.

There's a personal USB port above the tray table.

In addition there's a universal power port underneath the seat (two for every three seats)

Legroom is good, these seats offer 30" of pitch. Won't be an issue on a short flight like this one but wouldn't want to be stuck on this seat on a 4+ hour flight. 

The overhead panel consisted of both individual air vents and reading lights plus a flight attendant call button.

The recline for this seat is located on the right armrest whereas these seats can recline to a mere 2".

Boarding is complete and to my surprise the flight is almost empty with a load factor of around 25%. Everyone in economy class pretty much got their own rows to themselves. I happen to be the unlucky one to have someone in the aisle seat but nonetheless the middle seat stayed empty which was nice and will make this a more comfortable journey. 

Southwest Boeing 737-800 arriving from Las Vegas (LAS); flight time: 45m

Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A330-200 taxing for it's morning departure for Honolulu (HNL); flight time: 5h 40m

Pushback

We pushed back from the gate right on time. 
You can check out the whole pushback and takeoff sequence in the video below:

Cabin lights were dimmed for takeoff.

SW territory.

Airbus A319 taking off.

Takeoff

This morning we'll be departing off runway 07L.

Until next time PHX!

Last views of PHX before disappearing under the clouds.

We eventually broke through the thick cloud layer. 

There is a device holder were you could put your own phone or tablet on.

Tray table/Seat back contents

The tray table is of standard size and is extendable.

The seat back contents consists of the usual safety card.

Entertainment guide which shows you to connect to the AA portal for IFE access.

And lastly an air sickness bag.

Eventually we reached cruising altitude of 36,000ft.

Inflight entertainment

As mentioned previously, AA offered IFE through their portal on your own devices. Connecting to the AA wifi was easy and I was able to navigate to the entertainment screen without issue. Once there you have an impressively good array of movies, series, live tv shows, music and emagazines to keep one entertained with.

Everything was actually very good but the only negative about his was the lack of an interactive map which would of made it perfect. 

Flying over The Grand Canyon.

We eventually transitioned from mild warm weather to the cold wintery terrain of southern Utah.

The FA's sprang into the cabin to conduct the inflight service.

Inflight service

About 35 minutes into flight snacks and drinks were handed out. Since this was a morning flight, biscoff cookies were the options for snack and later followed by a choice of soft drink.

This is the standard economy class fare when flying with North America in economy class on all full service carriers. 

I appreciate though that AA gives out a full can of soda. 

Eventually the snow capped mountains began to pop below us.

Initial descent

Not long after we began a rather steep descent into SLC.
You can check out the entire descent in the video below:

The weather got dramatically better the closer we got to SLC.

Landing

This morning we'll be landing on runway 35.

Welcome to SLC!

We held short on the taxiway while a few DL aircraft were taking off of runway 34R. Here's a Delta A321neo taking off for Washington Reagan National (DCA); flight time: 3h 53m

Delta Connection (SkyWest) taking off for Vancouver (YVR); flight time: 1h 59m

Another DL Boeing 737-900ER taxing for it's departure to Seattle.

Arrival at gate

We arrived at the gate 25 minutes ahead of schedule, well done AA.

Upon exiting the aircraft, the flight attendant thanked me and wished me a good day.

This concludes the trip report series, thanks for reading!