American Airlines' WEIRD Business Class on the Boeing 777-200: London to JFK

today's video sponsor is surf shark hello and welcome to another video and welcome back to london heathrow airport i'm in terminal 3 because i'm about to take american airlines across the atlantic to jfk in a boeing triple seven 200 in business class this is part of my attempt to requalify for british airways executive club's gold status and this is a tear point run i'll explain what that is a little bit later on but first let's get cracking and enjoy the video [Music] let's kick off this video in flight connections at heathrow you see i just landed on a domestic flight from inverness at the time of this video american airlines were flying from terminal 3 and i needed to catch an airside bus to get between terminals anyway for those of you who don't already know a tier point run refers to a trip you make specially to build up tier points they're sort of qualifying points to move up the status levels in the va executive club points are rewarded by distance per sector london to san francisco is 140 tier points in business class but we're not going to do that inverness to london to new york to san francisco is three sectors and a total of 320 tier points do that both ways and you have 640 tier points and that's basically halfway to ba's top tier gold status it's fun if you like that kind of thing staying overnight in new york and taking the lunchtime flight to san francisco the next day on american's lovely transcontinental a321 oh and why bother starting from inverness instead of london apart from the extra 40 tier points each way in business it's cheaper there is no air passenger duty charged by the government from any airport in what's known as the highlands and islands of scotland [Music] it's been a month or so of positive news regarding the coveted pandemic vaccines are on the way and it's very likely the airline industry will make a modest recovery next year this video is from january 2020 and i've found editing it fun and i hope you'll enjoy coming with me on the trip it's strange to think how terminal 3 is actually closed at the moment and all these expensive shops are just waiting for the rebound to happen but there we go [Music] at the time of this trip i was a ba silver card holder so i could get into the joint business and first class qantas lounge in terminal 3. it's been here since 2018 but this was the first chance i'd had to check it out it's really nice there's a downstairs dining area but the upstairs is far more lovely the circular bar is a great centerpiece although i rolled my eyes just a little at qantas branding of what is basically the place they put the juices overall a cracking lounge and a really nice place to wait although it's not my favorite in terminal three [Music] the cathay pacific business lounge is my favorite it's just very much to my taste has a noodle bar and some excellent hot food at the buffet as well as some fantastic shower [Music] suites [Music] today's video sponsor is surf shark an award-winning vpn virtual private network vpns can spoof perfectly legally your device's geographic location giving you lots of advantages like unblocking blocked content staying safe on public wi-fi and leveraging lower prices online sometimes this works with plane tickets flying to hong kong in business class this time without the vpn from the uk i'm seeing the lowest prices here of sixteen hundred and thirty five pounds return enabling the vpn to search as if i'm from a lower income country can reveal better options as the way airlines price their tickets sometimes varies between the country of sale here an option with israeli airline ll saves us 48 pounds in one go that's a greater saving than 27 months of surf shark membership go to surf shark dot deals forward slash winging it for 84 off and four extra months for free of surfshark vpn these british airways 747s are now retired although happily all three of the examples in retro deliveries have been preserved like the migos 747 here which now lives at cotswold airport our aircraft today is a boeing triple 7 200 of american airlines one of the great things i noticed on the american airlines app is the option to not only see which restaurants are available in the terminal but also the ability to order food in advance of your visit that's pretty cool and really handy if unlike me you have a short connection [Music] um hello thank you so let's talk about this really goofy business class cabin it's so weird with seats alternately facing forward and backward most people who fly american airlines business class have an opinion on this zodiac concept d seat and most of those opinions aren't good for lots of reasons we'll get into my biggest bug bearer is that most of the seats involve looking side or face on at other passengers which is a really big drawback and a surprising flaw to find in a seat which is less than 10 years old the good news is that only americans 787-8 and some of their triple 7 200s have this seat with american having listened to the feedback and installing these much nicer super diamond seats on the 787-9 and the rest of the triple 7 fleet one of the difficulties in avoiding this seat is that on aircraft with this seat the seat map is actually identical to those aircraft that have the better seats only during check-in will you notice if you have these worse seats because only then can you see if you have some backward-facing ones [Music] so so so so i said in a recent video i was missing some of the sounds of travel but i can't say i really miss this though on american airlines i don't advocate or ever promote credit cards on this channel so that's enough of that let's tour this bizarre seat and see the features there's a bountiful two usb sockets and two universal plug sockets which is a good start but sadly that's the only thing this seat does better than most others there's a real lack of storage space you can't put stuff under the ottoman there's no closet or anywhere to even put fairly small items and even under the armrest where you'd normally expect to find a storage chamber there's nothing in fact there's nowhere to stow my headphone case at all which isn't even that big [Music] the tv is an okay size and flips out from the side wall and the table pops out as you'd expect from the side console it's sturdy enough but one of the things that's often hard to convey in a video is whether something is well built or not and this seat just isn't lots of american frequent flyers complain that because the seats are fixed in pairs you can feel every movement your seat neighbor makes i can't say i noticed that but this scuff here shows the fittings probably aren't as high quality as they should be enough of that though to be fair the seat controls are pretty good and positioned in a comfortable place and the review gets a lot more positive from here [Music] one of the things us carriers do better than most is on-board connectivity the wi-fi is very reasonable and works well all the way across the atlantic elsewhere american was demolishing stereotypes about the lackluster catering service found on u.s airlines ignoring the comically thin hot towel actually the food was really good and busted my expectations of it going to be just okay you'll also be pleased to know that for once i didn't go for the beef option on the menu having pre-ordered the chicken online via the manage my booking function a few days before takeoff the harissa prawn starter was excellent and especially so with a twist of lemon on top main course was the pesto marinated chicken breast which was also great with this romesco sauce a kind of tomato based sauce with nuts from catalonia [Music] finally for dessert a custom ice cream sundae which knocked spots even off the united airlines one i had in their polaris business class just a few weeks prior to this flight american provides excellent bang and olufsen headphones which are by far the best noise cancelling headphones offered by any airline flying from europe to the usa and the entertainment selection was extensive too although how and why the big bang theory manages to make it into every single airline's entertainment selection is one of the real mysteries of flight there's also live news if that's your kind of thing the bathrooms were fine although i did notice the largest of the three business class bathrooms at the front of the aircraft wasn't the one to feature a baby changing facility that's in the smaller mid cabin bathrooms as you can see here why put the baby change in the smaller bathroom it's a mystery american also provides self-serve mid-flight snacks in the galley there are sandwiches salads water crisps fruit and biscuits available in terms of the seats bed function i tested this out with a few hours still to run to jfk it's fine although a lot of people do complain about how claustrophobic the high walls feel and i can sort of see their point with two hours to go i was served a coffee and caught up on my emails and social media it really is quite something to be able to tweet your dessert from a plane the amenity kit was a curious foldable one by los angeles fashion house this is ground who i'd never heard of before it's got all of the usual stuff you'd expect but this eye mask was particularly nice the pre-landing meal was served about an hour before landing and consisted of two pies a fruit salad crisps and dessert the pies were pretty good considering they're reheated on a plane and the portion sizes were fine not too big as this flight lands well before dinner time in new york the views of the city as we descended were incredible [Music] overall a pretty solid flight the seats on this aircraft are a big letdown but pretty much everything else was spot on american now flies only triple 7 300 aircraft in new york with new seats but be mindful of the dash 200 with dodgy seats springing up elsewhere on the network my return trip from inverness to san francisco set me back 1249 pounds in a sale thanks again to surf shark for sponsoring this video go to deals surfshark.deals slash swinging it for four extra months for free and 84 off surfsharkvpn thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Wingin’ It! Paul Lucas

Views: 279,296

Keywords: american airlines, american airlines business class, first class, business class, american airlines 777-200, boeing 777, flagship business, takeoff, landing, london to new york flight, lhr, jfk, american airlines business class review, flight report, trip report, tripreport, avgeek, zodiac seat, american airlines 777 business class, american airlines 777-200 business class, cathay pacific lounge, qantas lounge, heathrow, london heathrow, paul lucas, wingin it

Id: B2Ckqh5Y8l8

Length: 18min 26sec (1106 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020