Poor experience in Flagship dining in Miami
 

Maybe we were unlucky - but just had our worst experience in Flagship dining.

Service was poor throughout.
Dining room was cold
Steak was full of fat (then got told the fat is due to it being rare haha! )
Rest of the food was average at best.
My wife wasn't offered a second drink. I was just handed my drink!

Not the first class experience that we have had many times before.

Hope it isn't the new standard.


​​​

I can't comment on the rest of it but the rare / fat content thing is believable. What kind of steak was it?

I prefer cuts with higher fat content but they need to be cooked to a higher temperature. I prefer medium rare for a US ribeye (hopefully USDA prime) and medium for Japanese A5 sirloin. On the other hand if I get a filet mignon (which I try to avoid) I'll get it rare at most.

All this steak talk is making me hungry. I have one prime ribeye left from a 4 pack I got at Costco. I know what's for dinner tomorrow.

Lower cooking temperature -> less fat being rendered. But the steak may have had so much fat from the start that cooking it more may still have ended up with excessive fat.

It's generally better than leaving solid fat in the meat (it can be chewy). Rendering it allows it to be absorbed by the meat while it rests, and also a lot of it melts off. When I cook ribeyes I end up with significant amounts of liquid fat left in the pan. I find that beef fat melts very quickly at high temperatures (the fat comes off while it's searing) as opposed to something like bacon, where you need to go low and slow to render the fat off and get it crispy.

Not surprising - been a few months since I have been in the MIA flagship lounge, but I’m consistently let down each time I visit the Admirals Club right next door. For 3 consecutive trips - at 9am each time - both coffee machines have been inoperational and the canisters with premade coffee have been nearly empty. Staff completely MIA (pun intended). I’m usually in a rush and specifically stop in to have a coffee. That they cannot keep their equipment working and filled with coffee AT 9AM is beyond me. Let’s see how they do today - Not holding my breath (and most likely not my coffee cup).

I fond the food usually good, but service has ranged from excellent to mediocre - including once when the waitress kept trying to discourage us from ordering anything saying we wouldn’t have any time (we managed to leisurely finish three courses)

That's kind of par for the course for AA F. Consistently disappointing.

To be honest, I don’t agree that Flagship dining is. It’s actually very good most of the time. Onboard is another matter and I agree with you there.

...at least it's consistent?

*ducks*

over time.. well years and years. I have just got use to AA never really meeting any expectations.. so that way I am never disappointed.

As a DL Diamond/former EXP, y'all re-validate (not that it need(s)ed it) my decision to leave. Maybe management should try its own "product" (as victim/passenger).

So, having flipped back and forth between DL and AA over the last month or so, I feel like DL possibly does better on the "long" end while AA does a bit better on the "short" end. I think I prefer the snack basket on AA's short-haul flights (I really like the Oloves), but DL's longer-haul catering might be a bit better (outside of my experiences with Flagship First, at least). AA also seems to have better "value points" if you're willing to grin and bear it with a long layover somewhere on an award flight, while those sweet spots are gone over at DL, and AA has somewhat more productive avenues for earning points.

So it's a mixed bag depending on your annual budget, etc.

Amen to this. I have been heavily using DL this year (effectively whenever I've had a choice) and have found the overall paid premium experience far better on average. The domestics I've continued to take on AA have largely been on A321s and have consisted increasingly of Gen-Z-ish FAs who tend to make a single drink/meal pass on each 2-3 hour segment and then appear to be visibly annoyed if you flag them down for another. AA has GOT to do something to improve the training and work ethic of it's younger mainline FAs if they want their premium cabins to generate premium revenue -- that's going to mean far better service levels and catering. It's obvious to anyone who's been paying attention that both of those categories have been deteriorating rapidly in the pointy end over the past 4-5 years. If they really want to compete with Spirit, they should just say the quiet part out loud by now.

Fair enough. I agree on the onboard product - with FFD, it's not bad, but not worth the price differential AA charges. I wouldn't pay hundreds of dollars for this, personally.