TRIP REPORT: Polishing Silver – American Airlines AA2663 Philadelphia to San Francisco (US Domestic First)

American Airlines AA2663 Philadelphia International Airport to San Franciso International Airport (US Domestic First)
Polishing Silver

If there’s a flight that gives me echoes of US Airways (and not in a positive way), here we go. So much promise, with budget cuts and mistakes attached to make this flight… worthy of documentation.

That’s about the one positive here. 

In this Tier Point-laden adventure

• All I ask is for one decent airfare. Just ONE. Anyone? 
• Off to Birmingham Airport
• FR669 Birmingham to Dublin Airport with Ryanair
• Welcome to Dublin, Premier Inn – Dublin Airport
• Early Morning Dublin Airport and US Preclearance, 51st and Green Lounge
• AA723 Dublin to Philadelphia – Flagship Business Class
• A Rocky Interlude – Exploring Philadelphia
• Return to PHL and the Philadelphia American Airlines Admirals Club
• AA2663 Philadelphia to San Francisco – US Domestic First
• A new terminal and The Crowne Plaza, Burlingame
• The Intercontinental San Francisco (and trying the new BART trains)
• Asian Eats around San Francisco
• A challenge unto myself: Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge
• Ferrying around the bay with Golden Gate Ferry
• Of Dragons and Lions – Celebrations in San Francisco Chinatown
• Back to SFO, American Airlines Admirals Club
• AA164 San Francisco to New York JFK – Transcontinental Business Class
• A snow-laden pit stop at JFK and the American Airlines/British Airways Greenwich Lounge
• AA104 New York JFK to London Heathrow – Flagship Business Class
• Transiting across Heathrow Terminals and the British Airways Galleries North 
• BA836 London Heathrow to Dublin Airport – Club Europe
• A Two Hour Dublin Turnaround featuring the Dublin Airport Lounge
• BA4469 Dublin to London City Airport – Club Europe by BA CityFlyer
• To the trains… and on the cheap
• Points in the bag

AA2663 Philadelipa International Terminal C to San Francisco International Terminal 1
American Airlines
Airbus A321neo, Seat 1A (Collins MiQ)
US Domestic First, sold as Business Class
2,521 miles flown. Revenue value: £214.35 
140 Tier Points earned, 1,715 Avios earned.

With my boarding pass blipped, I headed down the jetway.

I think the term is “Got wood?”

I was welcomed aboard the Airbus A321neo – with the other three seats in the front row being taken by pre-boarders.

Management panel.

That’s fine – I had boarded early enough in the cycle to have space for both of my bags in the overhead bins.

With them away safely and only my coat with me, I looked at the seat. This is a Collins Aerospace MiQ Recliner seat. This is not a bad seat, in the sense that it reclines in the configuration American Airlines has it in.

In terms of comfort, there’s enough padding for a flight of a few hours – however, for a transcontinental flight, this is much more of a bare-bones experience.

If you’re sat in Row 2 onwards, there’s USB power as well as mains power. Those in Row 1 get mains power only.

Hmm.

Even for Row 1 seating, the extended legroom didn’t feel much at all… and maybe Row 2 is a better bet (unless you need the small room in flight).

The rest of the aircraft slowly boarded, with people trying to work out how the Space Bin XL’s load (Turn your suitcase on its long side, rather than face down in the bin).

The instructions on how to put your bag in are right there. It’s also announced multiple times during boarding. 

With everyone finally aboard, the welcome announcements were made by the crew, with the safety demonstration to be conducted manually.

Just before that, one of the crew came out to address the business/first-class cabin… a bit sheepishly.

They announced that due to a catering error, eight meals out of 20 had been loaded. They would ask if people would be happy to have a meal or not post-take-off. Whilst we had been delayed coming in, it seems the meals didn’t meet the aircraft, and requesting the meals would have led to more time at the gate with further delays.

I felt sorry for the crew – so I skipped having a meal, hoping to be hopped up snacks.  But on the other hand, this is a big customer service failure by American Airlines. Whilst I understand aircraft swaps are a thing this had been in the system, along with its gate in Philadelphia for hours on end.

Failing to load enough food for enough passengers in any cabin is a basic customer service failure. Forgetting to load on a premium service… sigh.

I’m having US Airways flashbacks here.

I’m honestly surprised they didn’t delete the air vents at this point to cut a few pennies.

The crew followed along to the safety demonstration, which was carried out manually – as this A321neo is in their “Oasis” configuration.

Or to the rest of us – they didn’t fit screens, preferring to deliver the IFE to people’s devices. The perfect thing for a transcontinental service.

Not.

We were also warned there would be a lot of bumps during the climb and cruise – so the seatbelt signs were going to be on for a while.

Waiting for the go

It’s all gone blue 

With the formalities out of the way, the A321neo began its taxi around Philadelphia Airport – with the aircraft not in the mood to hang around.

I can’t say I don’t blame it.

As expected during the climb, there were wonderful views of downtown Philadelphia as the aircraft ascended and climbed into the cloud veil.

And yes, it was bumpy as heck on the climb out – for a good while.

In the meantime, I spent some time looking around at the seat. It seems American Airlines went for the basic version of the Collins MiQ seat – with it being a mechanical one. In addition, no legrest was installed.

And as for the inflight entertainment. Where to start with this hot mess?

If there was a sign that even the new planes are being costed to a budget, American Airlines did not choose to install them in this Oasis product, with them preferring to heavy-lift the IFE via the streaming service onboard and letting passengers bring their own devices.

Main Screen

If you have Apple Music and your headphones, you’re sorted

Live TV Interface

This is great in theory – except my headphones were in the overhead bin. In addition, my power bank had taken a beating over the day, so that was running low on juice too.

This could have been alleviated if they could have installed mains and USB power in the seat – sadly, in the front row, only mains power is provided. Where’s my charging block?

Correct, in the overhead bin.

And let’s say the passenger next to me was pretty much asleep after take off. That limits mobility in the cabin.

At least the seat features a fold-out tablet holder/phone holder. That’s good to see on this class of aircraft. If you’re going to remove screens and such on an aircraft, you had better install some sort of holder for a Personal Electronic Device, as holding one for six hours or so gets old… fast.

The holder works well – it supports the phone well and should support a tablet without issue. Here it is holding an iPhone 14 rather well.

Well it was nice to watch the pictures of it. 

The drinks service kicked off, with a gin and tonic to keep me occupied for the flight, along with some water to keep hydrated. American Airlines offers Aviator Gin on it flights.

Sadly, the snack pass didn’t happen with the meal service – and yes, eight passengers got a meal.

That’s good to see at least what was offered was issued.

I spent some time playing with the in-flight connectivity solution – given it would be IFC+E (Inflight Connectivity + Entertainment). This is provisioned by Viasat.

.

For a flight, they wanted $29 for a full flight or $25 for an hour.  I had already given Pansonic $29 earlier that day for a full flight connectivity… and I wasn’t in the mood to pony up for another six hours on the phone, considering I might be asleep soon enough.

And yes, whilst a lot of you might say “Why don’t you connect with T-Mobile for free?”… well, T-Mobile hasn’t been a thing in the UK for years (we know it as EE). What’s the term… “Offer is not available in all locations”

However, I scrolled down, and Viasat did something very clever – offered a free session Internet for 20 minutes by viewing an advertisement.

Now that’s clever – lure people in with a freebie, then once they’ve had a taste, charge them the bigger number if they want to stay connected.  For my needs, 20 minutes would be enough.

After watching the advertisement for… probably a credit card, mail and messages started to arrive – indicating I had connectivity to the outside world.

So what do I do when I have connectivity? That’s right, fire up the Speedtester.

The connection that is used is aimed at the Ka-Band (as opposed to the Ku-Band that Pansonic uses across the pond). In theory, this should lead to faster speeds.

At 18mb measured… it was passable. Not brilliant – but passable.  Obviously, we need to quantify the speed test. This is where firing up YouTube with its built-in analytics helps.

I use two videos to help me with this – the standby classic of Crab Rave, which managed to push through 1080p video with no frame drops. Rather impressive. And it’s always good to see the crabs bop.

I tried another video – trying to force it 1080p and failed – with it falling back down to 360p. This was that musical classic RUSH E  (the meme music track that proves if you paid off all the keys on a piano, by deity, you’re going to use them all and like it).

You can play this… right? Right? 

On a smaller device like a phone – this is not a problem – if your eyes can detect every clear movement of 4K video on a mobile phone, you’re doing better in life than most.

I spent long enough to catch up on social media, laugh at Pokemon Go and get a position check on FlightRadar 24 before the 20 minutes ran out.

After the free session ended, I explored the streaming content. This had a mixture of American Airlines’ normal IFE selection, along with DirectTV providing live content to the aircraft.

Again, it would have helped if I could listen, to or charge my phone to enjoy this content.

With the aircraft passing over the lower part of Lake Michigan (from as far as Google Maps could see in offline mode), my body decided to let sleep take over.  Well, there was naff all else to do. Besides walking myself silly as well as having the foresight to eat in the lounge was starting to pay off, there was some exhaustion there.

I woke up somewhere over Utah (or rather, I think I was over Utah.. it’s hard to tell without a map), as a member of the cabin crew was walking through the cabin. They offered to refill my G&T – but I declined and had water instead.

Somewhere.

Sometimes, the simplest things are the best. And no, I won’t drink myself silly or sleep. Believe it or not – I do have self-control.

They followed the water with some snacks – I grabbed a couple of bags and nibbled on them as we continued our transcontinental journey.

Eventually, the lights came up as the crew did a cleanup of the cabin – it was clear we were 20 minutes away from San Francisco. That was good – I was getting a little exhausted by this travel day.

The aircraft dropped over the valleys and into the Bay Area. I chose my normal potion on the left, so I would get some nice views as we closed in on San Francisco and landed.

I was right, as the aircraft was approaching the airport pm 28R/10L, the aircraft gently touched down.

Although there were no sounds of the hydraulics barking – I guess Airbus fixed that problem with the Neos. I’m quite fond of the sound.  Others – not so much.

The A321neo pulled off the runway quickly enough, taxing over to the main terminal area, and then towards Terminal 1, where my journey would end.

Alaska Boeing 737s

Being marshalled in.

With the aircraft parked, the lights came on, and the mad rush to get off the aircraft began – myself included.  There was a need that I didn’t address onboard the aircraft… and I was sure as hell wasn’t going to disturb people in flight.

Thankfully, I squeezed my past and grabbed my bags – so when the doors opened, I would be one of the first out of the aircraft.

I thanked the cabin crew and headed off into a new world for me – the Harvey Milk Terminal 1 at San Francisco International Airport.

Overall:

Disappointing. That’s the only way to describe this flight.

Whilst the hardware was “new”, it felt like a compromised passenger experience from nose to tail, with not all amenities being installed on row 1 (because not everyone carries a power brick in their pocket), to the lack of screens installed (yes, they save weight, but for a six-hour flight… it compromises the passenger experience).

Add in the forgetting the catering being loaded (which at a hub airport is unforgivable), and it’s not a great look, to put it bluntly.

The experience reminded me of when US Airways operated A321s in a similar configuration but without IFE via the connectivity solution… and the only bit I felt I was paying for was a larger seat.

On a transcontinental run, I’d expect better. A lot better. 

Next:

The Crowne Plaza Burlingame. Putting the Bay in Basic.

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