Why fly direct when you can connect? ATL-LAX-SFO (Part 2: LAX-SFO)

Upon arrival in LAX, I made my way directly to the lounge.  I decided to go to the Qantas First Lounge in the international terminal. 

The walk from the American Airlines Terminal 4 to the International Terminal is not too bad and is at least above ground (unlike the walk to the Alaska Airlines Terminal 6). 

I was let into the lounge without issue and reminded that they won’t be announcing my flight in the lounge.

The lounge consists of one big room set up in a few different zones. The restaurant area is at the far side of the lounge. Unlike my last trip to this lounge, I actually had good service and was seated promptly.

The menu at the time was the Autumn Menu:

Along with some specialty cocktails (on a card that wasn’t clean…):

I ordered the croque monsieur again along with a lychee martini

The sandwich and drink were excellent. After the meal, I briefly relaxed in one of the seating areas before heading to my flight.

After the lounge, it was time to head to the American Eagle satellite terminal.  I set a timer to leave the lounge a full 45 minutes before the flight.  That was not enough apparently, as I was the third-to-last person to get on the plane.  It’s also a bit ridiculous that the Admirals Club in the satellite terminal closes at 7:45 pm apparently.

They called a shuttle for me to get me to the terminal, and when I got there, I was directly quickly to my aircraft. Somehow, I wasn’t even the last person on board. A couple times I had considered flying AA from LAX to SFO so that I could use the Flagship First check-in. However, any time saved at security would be lost having to deal with this satellite terminal. So that’s not happening any time voluntarily.

American’s E175s are pretty much identical to any other Airline’s E175s, and their 1-2 seating arrangement in First Class is great. 

We pushed back and about 10 minutes later, we were told we were returning to the gate due to a computer problem.  Instead of calling maintenance on, we just switched to a different aircraft.  So, we returned to the terminal at gate 52I and then boarded the same type of plane at 52A.  As was expected, a bunch of people were annoyed, but they communicated the delay very well.  The flight attendant had to wake up the person in 1C because he was fast asleep, which was funny.

Since a plane was already waiting for us at the other gate, we were on the new plane and had pushed only 45 minutes after our original departure time.  The overall delay was less than 40 minutes, which is very impressive all things considered.

We swapped onto a virtually identical aircraft, and I took my seat of 1A again.

Once we were finally in the air, we had a pretty standard service of pre-packaged snacks:

As one would expect for such a short flight, not much time passed after the meal service before preparation for landing began. I’m pretty indifferent between Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 at SFO, but the walk from my gate in T1 to baggage claim was way longer than from T2, but I think that might have something to do with the on-going construction at SFO. 

In summary, flights between LA and SF are generally not that exciting, but the ground experience at LAX is top-notch.  The Qantas lounge was great before a short flight like this one, but having to get to the American Eagle satellite terminal is pretty terrible all things considered (3/5).  The E175 first class seat is the best regional seat one could ask for (5/5). The service was fine given the delay and everything (4/5).  The tiny service of snacks and a drink is standard for a flight of this length but unexciting (3/5).  Finally, the IFE was also standard and seemed to have a better movie selection than the previous flight (4/5).  Overall, the flight gets a 19/25, which is great for a regional flight.

I booked this flight as part of an ATL-LAX-SFO leg that I paid 33 000 American miles for.  Cash fares were over $600 for a similar flight (and over $800 for the exact flight), so I was able to get around 1.8 ¢/point on this redemption.  I slapped my BA number onto the ticket so that I would have lounge access, but neither BA nor AA give any recognition for taking an award flight.

Some flight blogs take issue with the fact that United and Delta count (some) award flights toward status but AA doesn’t. I disagree with this stance because on AA, you earn status metrics when you earn the miles, unlike on United and Delta, where you don’t earn status metrics when you earn the miles but rather when you use them, and that’s pretty much universal in terms of earning points.