Lefly

I'm happy with international J cabins on AA, especially when flying the 773 with the mini-cabin. The only case when I would prefer F on AA is on the transcon, due to the single seat.
This autumn I'll try AA F for the first time, but only because of the new policy regarding using GUFs also on AA services. I'll be curious to see if there is any tangible difference from J.
In any case, if ground Flagship services - especially at LAX - are not impacted by AA dropping F cabins, I'm ok with that.

Donsyb

The seat is bigger, you get a mattress (which is actually very good and makes a comfortable bed) and pyjamas. Food is pretty much the same as J but you get champagne and stemmed champagne glasses (which bizarrely you don’t get in J). The biggest benefit is FFD.

Donsyb

AA exec plat also get systemwide upgrades which allow them to upgrade for free from J to F on international flights, therefore there are likely a number sat in F who didn’t buy it.

Acidity

BA has GUFs, which (AFAIK) can also be used to get to F. Also I doubt there's a large number of people using SWUs to go to F from J - the marginal benefit is relatively low so in most cases it's a waste of a SWU.

Acidity

As part of this announcement AA also revealed that J on the new transcon planes will also be 1-1 with direct aisle access.

Lomapaseo

I'll drink to that

Lefly

Only on overnight flights, I suppose. I'm on a daytime LHR-JFK.

Good to know.

Smid

Hang on, I've flow AA J a few times via PHL, and transcon to LAX from JFK. Did they not serve champagne on those? Did they fob me off with something else and not show me the bottle? I thought it was only the domestic J which did that.

Donsyb

We had them for both daytime and night flights. If they’re not on your seat you can just ask. Bizarrely on our daytime flight they were on the seat, on our night time flight we had to ask 🤷🏼‍♀️

Donsyb

sorry I meant the stemmed glass is only in F! Although I think it was a different champagne on F from J….

Buster CT1K

AA will discontinue first class intl but that has not happened yet. There is a transition period.

Smid

Ah yes, I think some said LPGS who've travelled it, I've not, so don't know.

taylopet

I travelled through JFK T8 this morning. New gates and extension looked pretty much complete. From the dropoff area you can see through into the new lounge area which looks like it is still being worked on. Lots of hammering and activity around the Flagship First check-in area. Zipwall up around the gate 16 area where I assume they are punching through the wall to connect with the new gates.

1Aturnleft

It's no different in as much as everyone is trying to get something for free, all be it the revenue lost on a glass of champers is going to be small compared to the revenue lost on that last minute F ticket that can't be completed because the seats already been given away.

I guess the primary routes will be LHR-JFK and LHR-LAX but the joint venture shared revenue will mean AA don't lose out as everything is shared and BA can pick those passengers up on a codeshare.

Acidity

The US carriers have complimentary domestic upgrades down to a science, so it's incredibly rare that they actually are unable to sell an J ticket to someone who wants one because of complimentary upgrades (that's basically their Revenue Management team's worst nightmare). Often, the last couple of J seats don't clear upgrades until the airline has stopped selling tickets for that flight (aka 1 hour before departure). It honestly wouldn't surprise me if the cost of free lounge access on domestic flights for elites would be higher than the cost of complimentary domestic upgrades; especially as in the past few years the US airlines have gotten very good at monetizing the J cabin. FWIW, as an AA elite (soon to be ExecPlat), I would personally trade away complimentary domestic upgrades for Flagship Lounge access on domestic itineraries, though I realize many of my peers would feel differently

Either way, I suspect the loss of F from the AA fleet will not have a huge impact on the plans for JFK T8 for the reasons mentioned already: BA (and several other OW airlines) will continue to be flying F, and JFK is probably one of, if the not the, most heavy F destinations in the world.

AA has also experimented with a "Business Plus" concept, which is a J fare that includes all of the usual F goodies on the ground (so FFD access, Flagship Check-in, etc), so they seem to at least be exploring the possibility of trying to keep the First class ground components alive. I wouldn't count on that though, because I think they'll run into the same issues they ran into with F: the benefits just don't seem worth the money to the vast majority of AA's customers.