Menu
Blog featuring travel tips, packing guides, videos and photography from around the world.
Usually when I travel from the East Coast to Hawaii, I prefer to connect somewhere in the middle of the country, so that I could fly a wide body aircraft on a longer segment. For example, the last time I traveled to Hawaii, I flew an American 777 from Dallas to Maui.
We planned this trip pretty last minute, and virtually any of the “good” routings weren’t available in first class, or were prohibitively expensive. I eventually stumbled upon the following routing in economy for $350 per person:
03/04 AA1476 Tampa to Los Angeles departing 8:34PM arriving 11:00PM
03/05 AA31 Los Angeles to Honolulu departing 8:15AM arriving 12:22PM
There were two things that made this routing attractive:
I have Executive Platinum status with American, while Ford has Platinum Pro status. Both of those status tiers include unlimited space available upgrades, though of course the “space available” part is a major caveat.
If a flight is long and I don’t think an upgrade is a slam dunk, I usually try to find a way to confirm a first class seat, whether it’s by paying cash (when the premium is reasonable), or by using a Business Extra upgrade certificate.
When an upgrade clears for me on American, it’s often just on the Tampa to Miami route, and often it’s an onboard upgrade, because there were no shows.
I felt pretty confident about the upgrades on this itinerary, but still, you never know, especially when you’re trying to upgrade with a companion. The Executive Platinum upgrade window starts 100 hours out, so I was thrilled when I received an email at exactly that time informing us that both of our upgrades cleared for both flights — woot!
I don’t remember the last time I’ve received an upgrade this valuable on account of being Executive Platinum, so I was pretty excited about that.
We got to Tampa Airport at around 7PM for our 8:34PM flight to LAX. We had already checked in online, so headed straight to Terminal F for our flight. Boarding was scheduled to start at 7:59PM at gate F81. By the time we were through security, we had about 30 minutes to kill.
American Airlines recently brought back full meal service in first class, so I was looking forward to checking that out. First of all, I was impressed that a proper dinner was actually served in first class. Didn’t American used to have an 8PM cutoff for dinner service? So getting one on a flight departing after 8:30PM was a pleasant surprise.
Meal and drink orders were taken roughly 30 minutes after takeoff. To eat, the choices were described as chicken piccata with cauliflower mash or cacio e pepe pasta with a smoky red sauce and vegetables.
To drink I decided to order a Diet Coke with vodka. I don’t usually drink on domestic flights (I make exceptions for SkyClub Dom Perignon), but it was a late night flight and I was hoping to get a nap in, so a drink or three helps with that. Also, everyone (including Ford) makes fun of me for ordering Diet Coke with vodka, and I just don’t get it. Anyway…
That was served with warm mixed nuts, though I guess ramekins weren’t loaded, because the nuts were served in plastic cups. I was happy to see the return of mixed nuts at last, even if the presentation left a bit to be desired.
I’ve gotta say, this was a pretty good American Airlines first class flight. My upgrade cleared, it was nice to see the return of pre-pandemic meal service and pre-departure drinks, and the flight attendant working the cabin was friendly.
Of course American’s domestic configurations aren’t exactly great, given the lack of TVs, and lack of amenities. However, at least American has high speed Viasat Wi-Fi, which I find to be excellent. If all my American flights were this good I’d be a very happy camper.
© 2019 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Copyright © Defoes Lifestyle All rights reserved