Review of American Airlines flight from Dallas/Fort Worth to Orlando in Economy

I needed to be in Orlando by Friday the 23rd of May, and it took a while to figure what was the best US airport to fly into from Nadi, and then what the best flight from Dallas was. The only other viable option would have been Southwest from Dallas-Love Field, which would require an airport change and wasn't a great price either, so American it was. Not the most exciting end to this short Pacific trip, and it was a little painful coming off the Fiji Airways A350 and going onto this 😅!
The flight cost $150, not cheap but it was just before Memorial Day weekend and there weren't many better options.

There's not a whole lot to write about on this flight, so it's a bit of a short report.

Because the check-in staff in Nadi had provided baggage tags, I could just drop off the luggage at the connections counter without needing to check-in again. That turned out to be a mistake, but I wouldn't realize it until later.

There was just one big belt and it was extremely crowded. The people working there were extremely insistent that everyone should "drop and go" so it was very chaotic with people trying to get through to drop their bags and trying to get through to leave.
It didn't take too long to clear it though, and there wasn't any customs check before either (the "goods to declare" section was actually blocked off so even if someone had wanted to declare something they wouldn't have been able to) and there was still a while until the flight, in theory enough time to leave the airport for an hour or so but I didn't think there was much point in doing that. The airport wi-fi worked well, luckily!
Figuring out where to go afterwards was a little confusing, since the information screen, boarding pass and app all had a different gate. I (correctly) assumed that the app would be the most accurate.
Soon it started getting closer to departure and it was time to head through security.

The security line was pretty long, and the staff also suddenly created a new line and blocked one off and told people to move which made everything more confusing.
After clearing security there was still a while to go until the gate, with Skylink connecting the terminals.

(I was walking while I took this picture so it's extremely blurry) There was a loooong escalator up to the Skylink area.

It arrived within a minute or two.

There were excellent views of the planes from the train, including… (this section is going to be pretty long so feel free to skip ahead if too much planespotting isn't your thing)
A Singapore Airlines Cargo 747-400F

A Turkish Airlines 787 and Fiji Airways A350 (the one that I flew into DFW on)

Plus Cathay Pacific and Finnair A350s

But the international widebodies were a minority, with DFW of course dominated by American narrowbodies

Volaris and Sun Country further off

Qantas and Qatar in the distance

And now a different terminal, with Frontier coming in

Spirit. I never noticed the "Howdy" on the winglets before.

Americans taking off

Closer view of the same Frontier

The first of the non-AA full service airlines

The only international airline in this area

The small cluster of non-AA planes, with AA on the other side

And then the train ride was over, though there was still a view of the tarmac from the escalator.

There was a large US flag across from the gate. I'm not sure if it's always there or it was just put up for Memorial Day.

There were several other patriotic banners.

And here's our plane, N131NN. A 10.3 year old A321-200 (ceo), not the A321neo that it was meant to be.

The gate was actually an American Airlines gate.

The aircraft was a bit late, with inbound passengers starting to come off around 8:10 PM. Boarding was meant to start at 8:15.
In the meantime, the sun started to set.

Pre-boarding started at around 8:30, 15 minutes late.
Groups were called but were mostly ignored, with almost everyone getting up and either standing in line or just standing next to the line area. There were people standing everywhere and it was very chaotic and disorganized.
The jetbridge got backed up and they paused boarding after group 4.

After a few minutes they restarted boarding but didn't even call group 5 or anything further. Everyone just pushed forward, there wasn't really a proper line or anything.
Just before I went through the gate an alarm started blaring, the doors were closed for around a minute, and then the alarm stopped and the doors were opened. I'm not sure what exactly happened and there was no explanation.

The flight attendents seemed like they may have been a bit exhausted, they were standing in the front but just kind of stared at the passengers as we boarded, no welcome or anything.

There was a storage area for the crew's bags at the front, which you don't usually see.

Pretty standard domestic AA cabin. It was in good shape for a 10 year old plane. The configuration was a bit strange, with one of the crew seats rather randomly located between passenger seats in maybe the fourth row of economy, emergency exits near the front, and a lavatory (just one) in the middle of the plane.

The sides of the headrest were adjustable, though it didn't go up and down.

There was a USB-A port and general power outlet, my USB port was broken inside and didn't work. I have really bad luck and somehow always end up with the broken ports!

The seatback pocket and tray table were both very dirty.

There were personal lights and air vents, but they were located above the window seat and pretty much out of reach from the aisle.

The literature storage area had a sickness bag, entertainment card, and safety card.

There were device holders which were very useful since there were (obviously) no screens.

Entertainment was available through streaming to personal devices and worked from before take-off. I really thought I'd taken more screenshots of the content but if I did, they're missing, so this is what I've got:

This is the full selection and I believe it was all available on this flight. This is one area (arguably the only one) where they excel. There is an enormous selection of movies and shows, plus plenty of live TV channels. It would have been enough for several long haul flights and I definitely wasn't bored on this flight.
That said, while the content was great, the system was not. There was a 30-second unskippable ad every time the IFE section was opened, then again when a movie was opened, plus another 20 second ad. It doesn't sound long but it got annoying pretty quickly, especially since the whole process had to be repeated if I opened another app for a few seconds and then came back to the movie.
There wasn't a whole lot more to photograph on this flight, especially from the aisle…
Take-off was more than half an hour late. The seatbelt sign was on for close to an hour which seemed unreasonably long. Service only started after that, by which point the flight was about half over and I was starting to wonder if there would be any service at all.
The options were pretzels and biscoff cookies with a normal selection of beverages. This was the only part of the flight where the crew made any sort of attempt to be a little friendly.

The full can of sprite was nice and I do like biscoff cookies… it was a very standard offering that I've experienced countless times on different US carriers.

The bathroom was clean and had this sign in there.

It was pretty funny since it makes it sound like they have a bunch of amenity kits or something available. I almost asked what the additional amenities were.
Cabin view. You can't quite see it but on the left side there's a bathroom in the middle of the plane.

There was 20 minutes of free wi-fi available after watching an ad. It's not much compared to the free wi-fi on Delta (and I believe United?) but it's something and at least it worked properly.

Nothing else really happened on the flight. Despite the late departure we landed on time. There was a fairly long taxi to the gate, though. Lights were turned on shortly before landing.

Couple of pictures of the economy and first cabins on the way out.

There was no "thanks for flying with us" or anything from the crew. One FA was just sitting in her seat in the middle of the cabin. It's understandable and I'm sure they had a very tiring day, though no friendliness at all really harms the overall flight experience.
There was an extremely crowded train that took us all towards the baggage claim area, after which it took around 10 minutes for the bags to start arriving.

All the bags had arrived within around 10 minutes… well, almost all of them. One of my bags came, but that was just a carry-on that had been checked in, and there was still more to come… but it didn't.
At the office, they said that it was still in Dallas, and would arrive at 11:30 the next morning. As compensation, they would deliver it to the hotel. But the problem was that I was only in that hotel until the afternoon and would be moving to another one for an event, and I needed it to be delivered before that. But they said delivery would take a few hours.
Then after reaching to the hotel and using the chat to confirm what was happening, the situation changed. Now the flight arriving at 11:30 had been canceled (that was a lie: it wasn't canceled and in fact it wasn't even delayed) and so they had to send it on a later flight that would only arrive several hours later, which was far too late. The customer service agent was completely unhelpful and couldn't even confirm what flight the luggage would come on and only repeatedly insisted that it would be "the best possible flight." As for compensation, they did offer compensation for necessary items that had to be bought but couldn't say how much. Anyway, it went on and on until finally they confirmed that it would the earlier flight (which apparently wasn't canceled anymore?). I went to sleep at around 4 am that morning and did not adjust to the new timezone very well. It still had to be picked up the next day and in the end there was no compensation. Also no explanation for why it happened, I assume the people at check in never loaded all the bags.
This pleasant experience concludes this flight report and the Perth to Orlando series. Thanks for reading.