American Airlines

Other links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission that helps contribute to the running of...

A little under two weeks ago I posted a blog that suggested American Airlines was considering introducing Premium Economy cabins to its fleet. These weren't going to be token Premium Economy cabins like Main Cabin Extra is right now but, instead, would be full-blown Premium Economy cabins like we find on British Airways, Singapore Airlines and others.

Australian Business Traveler (ABT) has reported that American Airlines is considering introducing Premium Economy cabins into its fleet. According to ABT, American Airlines CEO Doug Parker confirmed that Premium Economy cabins were on the agenda - what are the chances of this actually happening and what are the implications for top-tier elites?

A couple of days ago I published a post discussing how the recently announced changes to the AAdvantage Program would affect award redemptions by European based AAdvantage members (American Airlines AAdvantage Award Chart Devaluations – Euro Travelers’ Viewpoint) and it wasn't pretty. In this post I'm going to show how the changes to how we earn redeemable miles, being introduced from late 2016, makes everything doubly bad. Yep, I'm full of good news this week!

Boarding started around 15 minutes late, but the doors were closed by 2:11 (just 4 minutes after our scheduled departure time) and we pushed back at 2:15 - not too bad. There were no major issues during the boarding process. The gate agents were good at making sure that passengers boarded only when it was their turn but they were as lax as usual when it came to ensuring that passengers weren't bringing on ridiculous sized "hand baggage". I saw some truly colossal cases brought onboard.

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.

If you've read the introduction to this trip report you'll know that we booked our flights to Aruba with cash and in the Economy Class cabin in the hopes that my Systemwide Upgrades would see us flying in Business Class. Having booked the flights in January (a full 9 months before departure) I felt reasonably confident that the upgrades would come through. They didn't.

I've never been one for videoing too many things (I'm pretty terrible at it) but a beautiful sunny day with no low clouds was...

I've lost count the number of times I've flown on this exact flight path and seen this view of London from the air (when...