Miami to Los Angeles

A few months ago my Miami to LA flight was switched to be operated by one of AA’s ‘A new plane a week’ A321’s with a two class configuration.

On boarding there was a bit of that ‘new plane smell’ and the new cabin interior – complete with entertainment was present.

Boarding started a little earlier than the advertised time, and whilst there is plenty of overheads, the sheer number of people on the flight meant a few bags needed to be checked.

One customer had a little tizzy with the crew as he thought that it would be the three class plane used from LA/SFO to New York. He was waving his phone about showing the pictures from the AA web site. I wrote about the confusing way that AA numbers its plane types on its web site – you can read about it here. It was interesting to see the confusion being worked out on the plane.

I chose row 2 as it wasn’t clear how good the leg room would be in Row 1. (These planes start their row numbering from 1, which is not always the case for American’s smaller planes).

The legroom was fine, and after my seatmate had settled in I had a rummage through the movies. Pretty much they were the same as those I had from Chicago to London last month. Whilst scrolling through the movies my monitor froze and after three attempts at resets, I was stuck with a non-working screen. The crew suggested that we wait until after take off to see whether it sprung to life.

The entertainment controller is in the arm rest although the screen in touchable.

It didn’t. However, one of the crew knew a trick where is they reset the whole row it sometimes works. After consulting the rest of the row we were reset en-masse, and it worked.

Dinner passed fairly quickly and there were ice-cream sundaes with toppings (or cheese) for dessert.

The video system froze again somewhere over the mid-west whilst watching the map, but as everyone was watching their movies I left it and napped.

We landed early at LAX but the gate was occupied and so we sat for 30 minutes until the maintenance crew towed the plane at our gate.

Los Angeles to Las Vegas

The next day the same crew were working my connection to LAX on a different plane. This one was its third commercial flight and felt very new.

This time I sat in Row 1 and the legroom is excellent on the right hand side. There is an inclined bar running the width of the two seats to allow you to rest your feet. This time the snack basket was offered (Fig room, chocolate biscuits, nuts, chips/crisps) and a drink round was done from the cart in both cabins. The entertainement worked fine the whole way to Vegas.

Overall
A nice plane, decent food and (semi-) working entertainment. I have to end by praising the crew – they were a delight. Nothing was too much trouble and they were through the cabin all the time.