Our gate was down a long hallway and a fairly long queue. After about 20 minutes, we reached the gate agent who confirmed our IDs and gave us new boarding passes in J. On boarding we could see that several other coach passengers had received the same upgrade. That was pretty cool as it looked like for some this was their first change to "turn left on boarding." The flight was on a 777-300ER with somewhat aging but still comfortable reverse herringbone seats.





That said, I don't think that catering had fully adjusted for the number of upgrades, leading to some of the menu items being unavailable, and the entertainment system headphones didn't work for the entire flight. But, I can overlook all of this given the value proposition obtained by using AA loyalty program for Oneworld partner flights.

Over the past 10 years especially, I've flown first and business class seats to Europe and Asia on BA, Etihad, JAL, Cathay Pacific and Qatar. This has made travel to far flung parts of the world reasonably cost effective and far more comfortable than I would have imagined 35 years ago when I first signed up for my USAir FF account. This leads me to the point of this trip report.

I am retiring in October. Cheers everyone!