Originally Posted by
arlflyer
Nice! It is indeed being sold as 2-class next Saturday (didn't check beyond), which means that the J seats can be selected as MCE (That is what OP refers to: when they do this, J gets treated like MCE. There are "true" MCE seats, 32 of them IIRC, as well).
Good for DC to get some love - personally I think it would be great for AA to have this aircfaft on the DCA-LAX route full-time, since DL has upped the ante with the lie-flat 757 seats. BOS-SFO is another one that would make sense to me too. Hey AA, there are cities on the East Coast other than NY, ya know?
Does AA even fly BOS-SFO anymore?
I don't even want to get my hopes up about seeing those aircraft on DCA-LAX. I flew DCA-LAX in paid F a couple days ago, having purchased my ticket about two days prior to departure. When I booked, there were only two unassigned seats left in F class (one of which I grabbed), which leads me to believe that very few, if any, of the F pax on the flight were upgrades. Perhaps AA could consider using an intl-configured 757 of the route, as 30 premium seats is quite a lot to fill, but 16 seems very easily doable (and perhaps in the future if the 321s are reconfigured with 20 F class seats, that will be the perfect aircraft for the route, assuming that 321s can make it off the runway at DCA fully loaded for a flight to LAX).
I had no complaints about the actual service from the FAs on the flight, as they were young, energetic, and polite. But, the soft product left a lot to be desired as it was treated like any other domestic flight. Our aircraft was an older 738 that did not have the BSI, so obviously no AVOD. We didn't receive noise canceling headphones, and just received the normal F class blanket, and not even a pillow! I remember a couple of years ago, AA would at least give you an international-style pillow and duvet on Transcon flights, but it appears that those have disappeared as well. I would have appreciated a thicker, larger blanket, as I was primarily interested in sleep on this flight, and the aircraft was kept quite cold. It was a breakfast flight, and there were only two entree options. There was NO snack basket offered prior to landing as there should have been, either, as I was awake for the last 60 minutes of the flight and even asked the FA about it.
The flight literally felt like a flight to MIA or any other midcon destination in F. I'm sure the DL experience on this route would absolutely blow AA out of the water. Hearing that DL would have offered me a lie flat bed gives me buyers remorse and now I'm jealous, as I would have loved to have a lie flat bed to sleep in, seeing as that was my goal and I had about three solid hours of it (I had only slept about an hour the night before the flight).
Going for great!