TRIP REPORT: Surprise, Surprise! AA87 London Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare (Main Cabin Extra)

AA87 London Heathrow Terminal 3 to Chicago O’HareTerminal 5 (Main Cabin Extra)
Surprise, Surprise!

It’s time for some alise seat fun across the Atlantic. We’ll play a game – how many times did I nearly fall out of my seat when dozing off? Plus some lots of passenger experience notes along the way. 

But will there be feet? That’s the question you should really be asking.

In this surprise-laden adventure:

• We all know the drill by now… don’t we?
• The early morning road to nowhere (and Heathrow Terminal 3 first thing in the morning, with an equipment change shock)
• Morning Lounging at the Cathay Pacific and American Airlines Lounges
• AA87 London Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare – Main Cabin Extra
• Into the USA and The Crowne Plaza O’Hare
• Hyatt Regency O’Hare
• Airplane Art Special from the Hyatt Regency O’Hare
• Various nibbles around Chicago
• An Instagram Trap? Coffee at Brü
• Chicago Classics: Giordano’s Deep Dish Pizza
• Enjoying a Chicago River tour… in the rain
• Back to O’Hare and the British Airways lounge
• BA296 Chicago O’Hare to London Heathrow – Club World (Club Suites)
• Racing across Heathrow… but where’s the coach?
• To onward surprises

AA87 London Heathrow Terminal 3 to Chicago O’Hare Terminal 5
American Airlines
Boeing 787-8
Seat 12L, Main Cabin Extra
3,953 Miles Flow, Revenue Value £184.21
1,473 Avios earned, 20 Tier Points earned

I headed down the jetway and prioritised getting aboard as opposed to my usual snap pictures of everything mood. Today was going to be one of “those” flights.

I could feel it in my bones to be blunt.

Heading aboard, this appeared to be one of American Airlines’ newer Boeing 787-8s – with the aircraft being just over 3 years old. As such it is fitted with the Collin Aerospace SuperDiamond seat in business class (as opposed to Zodiac’s Concept D), Collins Aerospace MiQ in Premium Economy Seats and Collins Aerospace Aspire in Main Cabin (as opposed to the Safran seats that were used before).

Interestingly, that makes it a complete Collins Aerospace nose-to-tail seated aircraft.

I’ll get to the seats shortly.

On boarding the aircraft, I was welcomed by the crew, and headed down the aisle and straight into a seating situation, with a group trying to find out what seats they were in – with one passenger having access requirements to complicate things.

Well, at least I’d get my own overhead bin. That’s nice. 

I chucked my bags in the overhead compartment and stood in my seating area – waiting for them to sort themselves out (and in case I needed to move). As one person was upgraded to create capacity, everyone in Main Cabin (including myself) had a seat at last.

Taken a lot later on. 

The Collins Apisre seat is another long-haul seat that airlines have taken up for their long-haul services.

Once again, it’s a slimline seat, with the thinnest of armrests (the idea that electronics are in the IFE unit, and the seat recline as a simple mechanism).

In terms of reclining, it has a hybrid reclining mechanism, with the seat pan going forward, whilst the seat goes back – so not a fixed back design, but it still offers some comfort. Directly in front of me is a screen.

In-ear earbuds were handed out by the crew.

The headrest provides a little support but does adjust itself after head pressure is applied for some time.

As well as a six-way headrest.

There’s also a mains outlet by the feet, sadly I didn’t use. I’ll explain why in a later.

Mains outlet. USB-A outlets were in the monitor… thankfully 

As I was getting settled, someone arrived to take the middle seat. That’s when all signs of comfort for this flight had just gone out of the window.

Oh well. It was “only” 7 hours and 50 minutes across the pond that day.

“Only”.

With the aircraft fully loaded, it was time to push back and head out. As usual, the safety video played – with no restarts thankfully.

And with everyone aboard on time, we taxied out early from Heathrow – a good 10 minutes early from departure.

Our aircraft taxied in some sort of direction – from what I could see, we were heading to the North Runway, for a Westward (Windsor) bound departures.

Work with me on the window content. I’m more annoyed than you are. 

With ease, the engines of this young Boeing 787-8 spooled into life, propelling the aircraft into the sky.

With the aircraft airborne, there was the usual list of things to check out and compare since I was in the air a few months ago.

Let’s start with the In-Flight Entertainment System, as this is the thing that would attempt to keep me sane for this flight. Again, it seems there is a Panasonic system of some sort installed, which is good in itself.

There are some changes, with the airline choosing to use FlightPath 3D’s mapping solution – rather than Airshow or ARC Maps. FlightPath 3D has made some serious inroads, with its infotainment solution being very fluid to use. And it renders lovely on this 8” screen.

In terms of content, it’s a little more disappointing, with pretty much the same content that was loaded when I was last flying transatlantic.

In some ways, it’s annoying. In other ways, it’s fine. Off to the Science Fiction section. Whilst I would have preferred some of the Lord of the Rings saga (because that would fill a flight lovely). Instead, there’s 2001: A Space Oddesy and The Fifth Element.

Which as we all know by now, is Super Green. I’ve talked about Luc Besson’s implementation of his vision, with interesting set design, and variable acting (and Gary Oldman as Zorg… whilst he may not have enjoyed it – he had some of the best lines of the film).

We’ll get onto 2001 later – that’s a much more detailed discussion and another post completely.

I also chose to connect to the Wi-Fi system, fully expecting the joy of Panasonic connectivity. Not this time, as this aircraft had Viasat connectivity, which promises faster connection over its Ka-Band network (as opposed to the Ku-bands that Pansonic and Intelsat currently use).

Pricing was akin to other long-haul flights with American Airlines – a lot more expensive than US Domestic flights, with 2 hours coming in at $20, and a full flight at $29.

 

Compared to BA’s £14.99 it’s a bit expensive. Compared to Finnair’s €24.99 for a flight, it’s a comparable value.

And considering its speed, it should be a better option.

Coverage maps indicated where to experience some of the better connectivity, with the Pacific notably set for slower speeds, as the backhaul switches to leased capacity.

Lets compare that with Viasat coverage on my flight earlier this year on the American A321 fleet

We can see there’s a lot of expanded coverage, especially on the main network in yellow/green. The blue coverage appears to be leased coverage from other operators.

Let’s do some basic speed tests to start with. We’ll use Speedtest.net as a basic vanilla test. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to test a theoretical download/upload speed over a short sustained period.

Given that a lot of people would be downloading, rather than uploading content on an aircraft (the perfect place to consume content), the next test is the “let’s stream content from YouTube”).

And yes, I had my earbuds in my pocket this time. It made a change for me to have them where I needed them for once.

We’ll start with Noisestorm’s Crab Rave. Whilst there was a little bit of content buffering, there were thankfully no dropped frames. In terms of picture quality, I forced 1080p through the device and got 480p. This game gets harder each time, I swear.

We’ll move on to The Sheet Music Boss’s Rush E next, as everyone loves a little bit of meme-style music that demands that all the notes be used on a Keyboard.

This time, the playback was smooth as anything from beginning to end – although it being a 360p stream is more than a little bit of a cheat. Still, unless you’re pixel-peeping, you’re not going to notice.

For me, I was able to keep connected, send photos, upload blog posts and even hop onto the work mail server (with Microsoft Authenticator push notifications working too).

There was more entertainment in flight… and yes, it’s the passenger next to me. I’ve been editing the pictures here… because… let’s say they enjoyed putting their feet on elevated parts of the back seat to get comfortable. Including the power sockets.

Sans socks.

Sigh. I’m glad I charged the laptop up.

I’ll keep these edited, for all our sanity – least of all, this trip report is not going to be Wikifeet for airlines.

Even I have limits.

Speaking of limits, the first drink run was made. Normally, I’d stick to a Coke. Today with the seat change and other things… I went for a Gin and Tonic. Yes at 10:30 in the morning.

What’s the term… You would have to after the morning I had.

The meal service followed, with a choice of chicken or pasta – pretty standard for an economy-class meal (with special meals distributed first).

Looking at the tray, we have a salad, a coconut cake bite, butter, Laughing Cow cheese, olive oil in a packet, crackers, bread and the main, tomato marina chicken.

It was forgettable enough that I forgot to take a picture of the main meal.  The only thing that stood out was the olive oil dressing in a milk-style packet.

The interesting part of the meal – it replaces those lovey pressurised dressing pots you used to get.

With the trays cleared away, I reclined the seat. It was still only two hours into this 7-hour and 50 special… and we had got to Chris Tucker being Mr Ruby Rhod.

Of course, to mix things around, there was 30 Rock – fifth season. Wait… did I see this on an aircraft two months ago…. Yep

Mr Ruby Rhodd.

Korben Dallas, winner of the Super Green Gemini Croquette content!

Sigh. Content is everything when it comes to an IFE system. It costs money to licence content – that’s a given. What’s not a given is keeping a static library. And that’s just cheap.

I explored the worlds of 2001: A Space Odyssey. We’ll have something (or maybe if I got my backside in gear, something) exploring the passenger experience side of this, but for now, let’s all hum “Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30″ and “The Blue Danube“.

Something we’ll never probably see – a Pan American Space Plane. 

This is normally the perfect time to get some sleep. However, I’ve discovered that I lean right a lot when sleeping. With the headrest not doing a great job at support at resting, I found I was leaning into the aisle and waking up with a jolt.

That was less than ideal.

I was counting on at least a couple of hours of sleep across the pond (even in economy class) on this flight. In the end, I think I might have got 30 minutes… if that on a nearly 8-hour flight.

Considering I had 3 hours of sleep before departure, this was shaping up to be an arrival day where I might get some stuff done, but I would be out cold by 8 pm Chicago Time if I was unlucky.

And no, I won’t use Melatoline. I try to sleep naturally.

At least I was awake for the mid-flight service, with chocolate ice cream being the order of the day. And yes, it was rock hard, requiring some time to melt to a point where one could stab and scoop at it.

With 30 Rock exhausting my entertainment budget (because airlines no longer choose to load “The Big Bang Theory” on their systems), I tried to discover something different.

Although I think I found something new. Those of you who have been around for some time will know I like “We Bare Bears”. Well, it seems they had “We Baby Bears” loaded up on the system.

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Well, Ice Bear is the coolest bear.

The pre-arrivals snack followed as we closed in on O’Hare. This was the expected half-wrap, with both vegetarian and meat-based options, with drinks following.

Lighting up the world. Interestingly, they removed (or didn’t install) the curtains that divide Premium Economy and Economy Class.

It’s nothing exciting, but it would fill a corner before we landed. Although it does make you pine for the days of a pizza on a tray before arrival.

At this point, I started to turn to FlightRadar24 – mainly to track what long-haul aircraft were both behind and in front of the one I was on.

For those travelling into the USA – this can be important, as it might dictate how long you’ll be waiting for immigration services when you land. There were at least two aircraft heading to O’Hare, but it seemed quiet in front of us.

I crossed my fingers as the welcome to the USA video started, as the cabin was tidied for landing, with seats going into take-off and landing position.

From what I could see, the aircraft was making an approach to the airport over Lake Michigan, with it heading towards a Northern runway at O’Hare.

Looks like the coast of Lake Michigan

Once more unto the grid.

With ease, the 787-8 landed at one of its US homes.

The Boeing 787-8 taxied around O’Hare, as it taxied past the central terminal area, finally heading to gate M21.

Interestingly, FlightPath 3D uses OpenStreetMaps data in its set. 

Near enough eight hours after I sat down, the seatbelt sign was extinguished.  I took the chance to grab my bags and items – as staying aboard this aircraft for much longer was not on my agenda.

With the baggage carousel confirmed, passengers started disembarking, and I followed too.

I thanked the crew, and headed into the USA,

Overall:

For a transatlantic flight, it was more than passable, with the expected inflight service, combined with new generation slimline seats to make things a little more comfortable than the old Safran seats. However, sadly, I nearly fell into the aisle at least when trying to sleep – those headrests sadly can’t take too much of a snooze on, especially when combined with body weight. I lost count after the fourth time.

For those who can sleep in aisle seats and not fall into the aisle (or sleep on someone else), I salute you. I’ll stick with my window seat (where I cab)m so I can fall asleep against the bulkhead wall.

Certainly, the new Wi-Fi connectivity via Viasat makes a difference whilst stuck in a seat for 8 hours – this was welcoming to see.  It’s a shame the IFE content is mostly static, however – even if it’s delivered over the screens and the Wi-Fi.

Next:

How long did it take for me to clear immigration, baggage claim and customs? The answer might surprise you.

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