American’s Domestic Business Lie Flat Seats Review
Domestic business seats (excluding transcon) are too often no more than wider versions of economy class seats with a few extra inches of leg room. That doesn’t always have to be the case. With a little flexibility and research you can try out some decent lie flat products on popular routes for way less traditional lie flat routes.
AA recently targeted me for a decent status challenge whereby I could earn Executive Platinum status by meeting reduced requirements in a 3 month period. (Full details to come in a much longer post.) I decided to have some fun with it and created a few personal challenges to incorporate into my journey to top tier status. One such challenge was to fly from NYC to Vegas on the longest route I could, minimum 3 legs while flying only in lie flat business. Why did I choose these conditions you ask? I have no idea, just thought it would be a good time to sample as many lie flat domestic seats as possible. It also boosted by miles a bit to fly indirectly.
I was only able to find two flights meeting my criteria and you can see the flight, plane and seat details below. To be clear, this is not a full review, so I didn’t evaluate things like food or service.
AA’s 767-300
These seats were awesome for such a short flight.
I know these planes are old but it definitely did not feel that way. I did however get a peek at economy and it was certainly showing its’ age. There was no seatback entertainment screen but instead a tablet. This doesn’t really matter to me because I tend to do work on my laptop anyway. Of course my favorite thing about this configuration is the ability to sit by yourself. The 1-2-1 configuration is preferred by most travelers and rightfully so, it’s a pain to have to either step over or make your neighbor put their seat down to get up.
AA’s 777-200
This plane felt brand new, it was definitely the nicest AA plane I’ve ever been on. Again, I felt the 1-2-1 configuration gave me a ton of privacy especially because the seats are angled away from the aisle. The seats were comfortable and I had plenty of space in all of it’s configurations. I was so impressed by how modern and new it was I even took a picture of the bathroom. I had a few issues with my flight, mainly the lack of Wi-Fi. It simply did not work. Another annoyance was the lack of storage space, I found myself juggling my things a bit more than I would have liked.
Conclusion
If you love planes and travelling it’s always fun to try out new products and lie flat is the ultimate. Bear in mind, that while the seats are good the rest of your business class experience is standard, so please don’t go in expecting amenity kits or amazing champagne, this is still domestic.
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Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
That Would have been better especially for my personal challenge! I’ll do that next time. Ty
From DFW you should have done the DFW-LAX lay flat on the 787 instead of Vegas to add to the fun. Nice post btw.