American Airlines Business Class Review: London to New York [LHR-JFK] on the Boeing 777-300

Last week, I returned home after a few weeks in Europe. I typically don’t fly business class, since I prefer to save my miles for more trips vs few luxurious ones. But somethings had come up and felt it was a good idea to move towards the front of the plane on an American Airlines Business Class ticket.

American Airlines Business Class Review: London to New York

Booking the Ticket:

When I initially booked this ticket, I had actually booked my ticket in coach. Since I was upgrading my ticket, I did not need to pay any change fees associated with my ticket.

I needed to pay the difference in miles and taxes and fees.

Add in the fact I receive a 10% rebate (up to 10,000 miles per year) for being an American Airlines card holder. This brings my total cost for 2 people to 52,500 miles and $195.61 per person.

I still have plenty of American Airline miles, so I wasn’t too concerned by this redemption. I don’t have millions of AA miles, but since I normally fly coach, I have plenty for a few more trips.

When I upgrade our flight, this also put us on American Airlines Boeing 777-300, which I was happy to fly.

Boarding:

When we left Vienna, our British Airways flight was about 25 to 30 minutes late leaving. This gave us about an hour to get though security to make our connection.

We had to hustle through London Heathrow, but we made it.

By the time we got to the gate they had already started boarding the economy cabin. When we showed them our boarding passes we had to go see another agent before we could board the plane.

Although they said they needed to ask questions, it seemed like it was more to keep the coach cabin boarding going smoothly. Which I can definitely appreciate.

Once the gentleman scanned our passes we were on walking onto the plane and towards out business class seats.

The Seat:

I have booked 3 business class tickets, in my life. On Air Berlin (which had a great massaging chair function), and Hawaiian Airlines (before they updated their cabins), and this flight right here.

This was an extremely comfortable seat and I was quite happy with the cushion and I do like to recline.

I thought the panel holding the controller, and buttons for the seat was quite bulky. Right where that pillow is covering up is a very narrow arm rest. If the panel wasn’t as bulky, it might have allowed for a larger arm rest.

Inside the panel is where the Bose headphones and a bottle of water were located. I think this is more wasted space and added to the bulk to the panel.

The controls were pretty self explanatory. I did find an issue when trying to connect my charger to the outlet. When I connected my charger to the outlet, the charger kept falling out.

The weight of the charger was too much for the outlet to hold my standard US charger. Since I was coming home from Europe I tried my European adaptor and that seemed to have done the trick.

The Meals:

There were plenty of options to choose from on the menu, which is always great. Fortunately, American Airlines didn’t run out of options, unlike my British Airways flight on the way to London.

The Menu:

There were some pretty good options for the Main Plates and the dessert was a great list as well. This is definitely a larger list than I usually get sitting in the back 🙂

There were plenty of alcoholic beverages to choose from! I had plenty of beer on my trip, so I opted to not have any alcohol on the flight. I drank coffee (a staple in my diet) and water.

Both “Light Meal” options sounded very good.

While I am not a vegetarian, it was great to see them have a solid list of vegetarian options. Not only did they have options, they had options that actually sounded good. 🙂

My Meals:

The appetizers were both the sliced smoked chicken and the gem lettuce wedge.

The sliced smoke chicken was full of flavor and had a great smokey flavor. The roasted vegetable underneath the chicken seem to have absorbed the flavor and were perfectly cooked.

The gem lettuce wedge was very good as well. The lentil tabbouleh was amazing and the cherry tomatoes were cooked well enough to give the tabbouleh even more flavor. The lettuce leaves were a bit dry, but crisp.

I did opt for a pretzel roll, because well who doesn’t like a pretzel roll? This was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. I had no complaints about the roll 🙂.

The appetizers were great and well prepared.

Main Plate:

For my main dish, I chose the slow cooked beef.

This definitely exceed my expectations for the main course.

The beef was extremely tender and the wine sauce was fantastic. There were (what looked and tasted like) pearl onions in the sauce as well. These added a great flavor to an already flavorful meal.

The spatzule noodles were great. It actually paired well with the beef.

One part I didn’t care for, which is more of a personal preference is the lightly cooked romanesco. I prefer my broccoli softer, but this doesn’t make it bad. Just not something I care for.

The main course was a well portioned amount to where I felt content, but not overly full.

Dessert:

Well, this is one spot I chose to ask for more than one item.

I decided to have the hot fudge sundae (seriously, who would pass that up?) and the gourmet cheese plate.

The hot fudge sundae was definitely kept in a freezer that was meant to keep the ice cream rock hard. The hot fudge lacked the hot part, but still tasted great. It would have been nice to have the ice cream a little softer, but the ice cream was fine.

The cheese platter was great. I honestly could not tell you the type if cheese that was on the plate. What I can tell you is they tasted great. The date and (what tasted like) apricot gelatin were sweet and paired very well with the cheese.

Dessert was really good, although the ice cream was harder than a rock.

Pre-Landing Meal:

This one was a pretty easy choice for me as I really enjoy Mediterranean dishes.

This was a very tasty dish and I am happy I chose it.

The salad was fantastic and the asparagus was cooked just right. I am a HUGE tzatziki sauce fan and this sauce was pretty good.

While fruit is hit or miss, this fruit tray was fresh and juicy.

Looking at the chocolate and caramel pudding. This was a great little treat to finish off the pre-landing meal.

Service:

The staff was very attentive and stopped by frequently to make sure things were in going well.

At one point, Kristin’s in flight entertainment stoped working and the staff was very quick to reset her seat. Within a few minutes her in flight entertainment was working again.

The service was great and honestly far better than I was expecting. It was by far the best service I have ever received on a flight serviced by American Airlines.

WiFi:

This was definitely the worst part of the entire flight. It would have just been better had American Airlines not even offered WiFi on this flight. It was horrific.

The inflight WiFi was being supplied by Panasonic. I have had my issues with GoGo, but this was my first experience with Panasonic and I would gladly take GoGo over this garbage.

I was trying to get some work done over on my Youtube Channel as well as start working on a few other projects.

The flight was about 7.5 hours from London to New York. For the first 3 hours trying access the WiFi page would just keep going in a loop. There was no way to actually get online.

Finally 3 hours later, I was able to actually purchase a 4 hour pass. I purchased the WiFi pass with my Discover It Miles, so I’ll be reimbursed for it.

Once I was able to get online, it was just as frustrating trying to purchase the pass. In one hours time, I was able to access 2 pages.

Even the passenger sitting behind me complained about the WiFi.

Departing the Plane:

This is something I read about on a fairly consistent basis with American Airlines and I found it frustrating.

We arrived into New York City (JFK) on time and at the gate on time. But…

Once we arrived at the gate, we had to wait close to 30 minutes for someone to bring the jet bridge to let us off the plane. That seems bit long since American Airlines knew we were coming.

Thankfully, we didn’t have a connecting flight. If someone did that definitely could have set them back.

Conclusion:

We normally don’t fly business class, but this was a great way to get home.

The seat was comfortable, food was great and the service exceeded my expectations.

The WiFi was atrocious and while we landed on time, American Airlines failed to get us off in an appropriate time frame.

Even with the mishaps, we were very happy with this flight.

What do you think of American Airlines Business Class?

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