Review: American Airlines 737 Economy Class (MIA-AUA)

October 29, 2015

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This article is part of a broader Aruba & NYC trip report from October.

Boarding Experience

Boarding started very promptly 45 minutes before the scheduled departure time. Luckily, due to the overcrowding in the Amex Centurion lounge, we had headed to the gate earlier than we normally would have and we got to the gate just in time for Priority Boarding.

Kudos to the American Airlines Gate agents who were not shy in turning back people with “Group 3” printed in a big, bold, font on the boarding passes while First Class and Executive Platinums boarded.

It’s on flights like these that I’ve found it’s hardest to get overhead bin space as vacationers attempt to circumvent the checked baggage fees by bringing all their worldly belongings onboard – and this flight turned out to be no different. That made it extra important to board promptly as, having booked exit row seats, we had no storage at our feet.

Fortunately we were ok, but watching other passengers board I couldn’t help but wonder how some of the bags that were being wheeled onboard had made it past the American Airlines Gate agents. Some wouldn’t have fitted into bag-sizers that were twice the permitted size!

Airlines need to do something about this because it’s not fair on (a) passengers who keep the hand baggage down to regulation size and then can’t find anywhere to stow it and (b) passengers who have a bit of respect for their fellow travelers and pay to check bags that don’t meet the size requirements.

Still, there will always be those who think that the rules are for everybody else…just not them.

Cabin/Seat

The plane was a Boeing 737 which American Airlines as fitted out in a 3-3 set up in Economy Class:

This seemed to be one of American’s older plans and it felt quite “tired”.

The seats looked like the ones we’d just experienced on the American Airlines 777-200 from London and they felt the same as well.

There was ample leg room….

And even the most militant of knee defender users wouldn’t have felt the need to get their gadget out (although, even if they did, it would be pretty pointless and the seats in the row in front don’t recline!):

The exit row seats had the tray tables in the armrest (unlike the Finnair A320 I recently flew on) but, despite this, for a 2.5 hour flight the seat width wasn’t too bad.

I took a look at the leg room in the non-exit rows and it seemed tolerable for short-ish journeys but it could feel a little cramped on anything over 3 hours.

Connectivity/Entertainment

Most importantly, for anyone with an electronic device, the American Airlines 737 has proper DC power sockets under the seats (unlike the antiquated 777-200s):

And, equally as importantly, the one under my seat worked!

There were signs all over the aircraft that there was WiFi onboard and even the drop-down screens informed passengers that WiFi would be available on the flight…..

….all of which I thought was more than a little ambitious considering just how much of our flight was over water…..

…as I was pretty sure none of American Airline’s aircraft (other than the 777-300s) have over-water WiFi capability.

Nevertheless I thought I’d give it a try and, around 30 minutes after we had taken off, I attempted to connect.

The Go-Go WiFi network was showing in my list of network options:

But, unsurprisingly, when I tried to connect there wasn’t anything to connect to:

Despite this, American Airlines provides a seat-back information card detailing how you can access free entertainment via Go-Go inflight WiFi (click to enlarge):

I’m sure this is a great addition to most domestic flights but it isn’t much use when you’re flying over the Caribbean 🙂

For those who hadn’t brought along their own entertainment there were shows to watch via the overhead drop-down screens (I caught a glimpse of the Late Show and I think they also played Two Broke Girls…but I can’t be sure).

Food & Drinks

We had taken off from Miami at around 5:40pm and at around 6:30pm the crew came around with complimentary soft-drinks and alcoholic beverages and food that you could pay for.

My status with American Airlines gives me a free alcoholic drink and a free food item when I’m seated in Economy Class but, as I had gorged on short-ribs in the Amex Centurion lounge, I wasn’t in the slightest bit hungry.

American Airlines provides a food & drinks menu in the seat-back pocket but, it’s worth noting, that not all items on the menu are always available. On our particular flight I overheard the flight attendant telling passengers that only the left side of the menu was available (click to expand):

The drinks selection looked like this:

Amenities/Service/Other

As this was a comparatively short flight and as we were in Economy Class there weren’t any amenities to speak of. Not even blanket….not that I really needed a blanket on a flight to Aruba!

The crew was perfectly ok. Nothing really stood out as good or bad…but then we didn’t really see much of them on the 2.5 hour flight.

One thing that I noticed was that a bit of US Airways is slipping in to the “New American” with credit card commercials being played when the drop-down screed are deployed before take off:

Commercial for the Citi AAdvantage Executive Card

I guess this isn’t as bad as having the Flight Attendants hawk the credit cards or having advertisements plastered all over the tray tables but it’s still a bit down-market.

Overall

The plane was old and if anyone was expecting to use the internet (which I wasn’t) they would have been disappointed. Half the battle with keeping passengers happy is managing expectations so I don’t know why American can’t manage to at least remove the “wireless available” information from the pre-departure videos. How hard would that be?

The exit row seat was fine and the leg room in the exit row was more than enough for me (6ft) so most passengers should be ok. The non-exit row seats had less leg room (clearly) but they too didn’t look too bad.

Overall it was a perfectly acceptable experience for a short-haul Economy Class flight but there wasn’t exactly anything to get overly excited about or anything to make me think that it’s worth choosing American Airlines over any other airline in the future – and isn’t that what an airline should be striving for?