Flagship First on my favorite route: LAX-BOS

As regular readers will know, American Airlines is eliminating its Flagship First Class product by the end of this year.  However, due to continued delays at both Airbus and Boeing, no official date has been set.  The plan is to remove Flagship First from existing aircraft once American Airlines starts taking delivery of its new 787s and A321XLRs with new Flagship Suites, but those timelines continue to be unclear.  After this was announced over a year ago, I mentioned that I would try to fit in a few more Flagship First flights before it was eliminated.  In 2023, I had set a goal to fly both International and Transcontinental Flagship First a few more times, and then managed to book three such transcontinental flights and one such international flight.   Including the New Years 2024 flight, that was five total since I reported on the Flagship First elimination.  At this point, I’d argue that I’ve fulfilled my desire to fly it before it gets eliminated and going forward my Flagship First flights will just be because I have managed to find good flights. 

So that brings us to this article—I found a good flight to Boston from Los Angeles in Flagship First!  At this point, I’ve become familiar enough with American Airlines’ pricing patterns to know which flights look like they will have “cheap” upgrades to Flagship First available.  Flagship First on the flights between LAX and Boston seem to have a price floor of around $1050.  If tickets are available at that price and the flight is not scheduled at a business-heavy time, I’ve found after-purchase upgrades from Main Cabin to Flagship Business/First are usually available at $291/$581, respectively.  And that’s what I did on this flight!  Crediting flights like these to British Airways is good because they earn full tier points, but now they only earn Avios based on the initial ticket price (which can be pretty low).

I flew into Los Angeles the night before my flight to see a friend and then continued to LAX the next morning for this flight.  The Jetstream across the US tends to be pretty strong, so this flight is often less than 5 hours. We didn’t have the best tail wind, so our flight ended up being the full 5 houts.

I was dropped off right outside the curbside Flagship First check-in entrance and was then escorted directly to the front of the Pre-Check line, which was pretty short as usual for this terminal.  I cleared security and then proceeded directly to the Flagship Lounge.

My flight was scheduled for 14:30, so I arrived right in time for lunch.

After a nice time in the lounge, it was suddenly time to board.  In classic A321T fashion, the boarding process only took about 7 minutes.  In the time it took me to get from to the lounge to the gate, they were already on group 9.

Shortly after boarding, I found my seat: 3A.  I’m working on trying out every seat in the cabin. So far, I’ve tried out 1A, 2A, now 3A, 3F, and 5A. 5A is the winning seat so far for me.

I was warmly welcomed onboard by the inflight crew, who noted I was the last First Class passenger to board by (warmly) asking, “where have you been?” I informed her I was having a nice time in the lounge, and she seemed genuinely pleased to hear that. That level of energy continued throughout the inflight service, which I appreciated.

Apparently I was a bit blurry that day, haha. I flipped through the menu as I always do. This flight left around 2:30 pm, so it was a lunch time meal service.

The mains were different from my JFK-SFO flight in January, but the other courses were the same.

They still didn’t have a wine list on the menu though:

Even though the flight was at 2:30 pm, they still dimmed the cabin lights for a more relaxing vibe.

Since I had had a nice meal in the lounge, I waited a couple hours into the flight before having what was at that point, dinner.

I had pre-ordered an Asian Vegetarian meal for this flight to try out something different. It started with a vegetable-heavy appetizer and a lettuce-based salad. This was actually a better salad than I usually get on American, since I don’t really like spinach. The appetizer wasn’t bad, but it mostly felt like a second salad to me.

The main course was a cauliflower curry, which was similar to the Asian Vegetarian meal I had had on Charlotte to San Francisco.

After I had the main course, I asked about the soup course. I was informed that a soup course doesn’t usually come with the special meal, which is odd when you consider that the soup course is one of the main differentiators in meal service between Business and First on this route. But they had extra soup available, so I still got one.

In summary, I still believe Flagship First is the best way to fly across the United States even though American Airlines is getting somewhat lazy with it.  The Flagship Lounge at LAX is a great place to hang out before any American flight, and I continue to enjoy and appreciate access to it (4/5).  The seat on this flight is still my favorite offered for this type of flight (5/5).  The service on this flight was great; the flight attendants really made me feel welcomed and were both very proactive and responsive (5/5).  The special meal on this flight was alright, that’s what I get for trying new things for my readers (4/5).  And as always, the IFE was standard for this type of flight but the seatback TV does put it ahead of other AA flights (4/5).  I still wish there was free Wi-Fi in first class though. Overall, the flight gets a score of 22/25, which is great.

As I mentioned before, I booked this flight as a standard Main Cabin flight for around $168 and then upgraded to Flagship First for $581.  I charged the upgrade to my Ritz-Carlton Card, which allowed me to use the entirety of its $300 travel credit.  I credit this flight to British Airways but since I had booked this flight after British Airways updated its mileage earning policy, I earned the full 210 Tier Points but only 1016 Avios, which represents nearly a 90% drop in Avios earned compared to before. I could’ve directly paid for the first class ticket and not missed out on the extra Avios, but the extra cost was not worth the 8 100 Avios.