American Airlines, Business Class Flight New York to London, October 2021
Details
- Flight Duration: 7 hours
- Seat: 9D - Business Class Pod
- Number of seats on plane: 52
- Type of plane: Boeing 777-300ER
- Cost: $512 plus a system wide upgrade and $134 in extra taxes for the return.
Pre Departure Lounge
Flying Business Class, one gets access to the American Airlines Flagship Lounge, which is a good international lounge. Nice food offerings, alcohol above most others in the world (Including many First Class only I have been in, in Asia), showers and a lot of space.The Seat
The seat is a business class pod with shared shared openings in the center seats, the windows are isolated. 6 1/2 feet long, 20.5" wide seat. It encompasses 2 windows on the side of the plane, and converts into a full length, lie flat bed.The Cabin
The business class cabin is at the front of the aircraft, and very separated from the rest of the plane, but also cut in half, with 8 seats near first class (these used to be first class pods until they cut the plane down from 16 to 8 seats), with a minor barrier to First.It is a large cabin, and the overhead space is pretty decent, and you need it, for the storage ability in your pod is pretty minimal.
Amenities
The amenity kit comes in a bag from Shinola, a Detroit American "rugged" fashion house, DS&D body lotion, a pen, socks, sleep mask, ear plugs, toothbrush and toothpaste. The bag is well built, with a long zipper that allows the bag to open up very largely. Overall though, I found the items inside a bit missing what is needed for international flights and somewhat dissapointing (Burts Bees bring back would be nice American!).Preflight
Being covid times, they brought by a bottle of water for pre-flight service, and well, that was it.Dining
The food was great, I always go for the beef on American on international flights and in over 12 years, I have not been disapointed with that choice.Arrival
Arrival into LHR was a very straight foward affair, 30 minutes before we got all situation and flew around London a bit, then into Heathrow. I went to collect my bags from the turnstile after immigrations, and it was 3rd bag off the plane. Priority baggage works in London (not so much in JFK but that's going to be a different post at some point).After clearing customs, I went to the British Airways Arrivals lounge to clean up and have some breakfast (and why I skipped breakfast on the plane) before taking the Tube into London and my hotel.
Summary
It's a very good and world class matching business class. The Bang and Olufsen headphones are astounding, I save batteries for my Bose during the trip because these were superior. The bed setup is acceptable, and you can sleep, just set up your blankets and such before you buckle down but after you are fully situation down your bed. This keeps blankets on you overnight better.So the price between basically everyone from JFK and LHR in the OneWorld alliance is identical (by contractual obligations), American has the best Business from JFK, which includes Finnair, British Airways and Iberia for your primary choices to London.
Tip: If you can, and you're alone take the single seats against the windows for privacy. JFK is usually cheapest USA departure point to Europe. Pre-order your food on the website. If the Arrivals lounge is open, utilize it (you also have to be flying into terminal 5, but JFK has been lately and it seems that plan is continuing).