2025 begins with a transcon flight!

It’s time for 2025 to begin!  My 2025 travel begins remarkably similarly to my 2024 travel.  Specifically, I’m beginning by flying American Airlines’ Flagship First, but this time, I’m flying BOS-LAX-SFO instead of JFK-SFO like in 2024.  I had originally booked a flight in standard domestic first class from BOS-PHL-SFO because I needed the tier points for British Airways.  At the time of this flight, I did still need the tier points, so it made sense.  I stayed at the Cambridge Marriott, right near MIT and Harvard during my trip to Boston to see friends for New Years.  I had stayed here previously during the pandemic and have had great experiences both times.

However, some interesting weather was brewing in the middle of the country at the time: Winter Storm Blair was beginning to make its way east.  In preparation for the storm hitting the east coast, all major airlines were offering travel waivers for the affected airports to allow people to travel different days or, as in my case, re-route away from the airports.  Philadelphia airport was one of the affected airports.  My flights were scheduled to take place before the storm hit, so I didn’t have any specific need to change my flights but I wanted to see what my options were.  Specifically, I wanted to see if there were seats on BOS-LAX-SFO.  Lo and behold, there were.  I had to take a connection either way, and I find it easier to do a long flight and then a short flight, rather than the other way.  In addition, BOS-LAX is, as we know, operated on their A321T, which meant that my domestic first class ticket (which books into a business class fare code) should get me a seat in Flagship Business with a lie-flat seat and a multi-course meal. 

I logged on and checked, and not only was there a seat available on the flight I wanted, but the online system even offered me a seat in either Flagship Business or Flagship First for just the difference in taxes (about 40 cents).  So, obviously I jumped on it and swapped to that flight immediately.  Going from a domestic first class seat to a Flagship First seat for 40 cents is a huge upgrade.

A couple days later it was time to head to the airport and go home.  As I often do, I started off at the Chase Sapphire Lounge, which is one of my favorite lounges in the US and the best one I’ve been to in Boston.  Delta now operates a DeltaOne lounge in Boston that might be better, but it didn’t exist back in January, and either way I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet anyway.

The Chase Sapphire lounge continues to offer an excellent selection of food and drink:

I opted to grab a bit of everything, but the stars of the food show for me were the orange chicken and the salad.

I also had access to American’s Admirals Club, so I decided to go check it out as well.  The club is way closer to the gate than the Chase lounge, but really can’t compare.

The seating is bland but perfectly comfortable:

The food selection at the Admiral’s Club is way more basic, however.  There are some small desserts:

And their standard buffet (which is admittedly an improvement compared to previously):

I grabbed some meat, cheese, and a roll.  But also, they had macarons, which were pretty good for being in an airport lounge. 

Once it was time to board, I was actually on the plane somewhat early because I didn’t have to trek all the way from the Chase lounge.  This flight was particularly important for me because it was the last flight that I needed to complete my 10-seat sweep of the Flagship First cabin.  Behold seat 4F:

Waiting at my seat was… not much.  The bedding was there, as were the slippers, but there were no menus, water bottle, headphones, or amenity kit.  Everything except the headphones were instead brought out during boarding.  But everything did eventually arrive.  It was pretty clear from the lack of care taken to prepare the cabin that the service on this flight was not going to be great.  And it wasn’t.

When I did finally get a menu, I saw that it was basically the same as every other time I’d flown Flagship First in 2024.

Realistically though, I couldn’t complain.  The Flagship First crews are no different from the crews that would operate standard domestic first flights, and I still had the Flagship First hard product, so everything was still great.

That’s the smile of someone who has completed his 10-seat sweep. 

As promised, eventually everything did arrive at my seat.

I don’t have any pictures to really demonstrate this, but this seat had seen better days.  The cushion had lost a lot of its padding, and it had an awkward gap when put into lie-flat mode.  I did try to fix the cushion (as I’ve seen flight attendants do), but I wasn’t really able to do anything about it.  Now, 4F was the last one for me to try out because I knew it wasn’t going to be anything special.  And it wasn’t.  I would have preferred to be in row 5, but I needed to complete the sweep.  I did eventually get headphones after takeoff (and then collected before landing).  But the IFE on this flight was not great; I had trouble getting the screen to respond, the headphones’ noise-canceling weren’t working, and as always, there was no free WiFi.

As is standard for me, I had eaten in the Chase lounge, so I delayed the meal until late in the flight.  That meant that I didn’t get a choice of appetizer, so I got the beet poke.  It was fine minus all the onions.  I don’t really know what makes beets become poke, but here we are.  The salad was exactly as it looks: nothing wrong but nothing exciting.

The soup was not the best presented ever, but it was not burned, and I like butternut squash soup.  Every time I’ve had soup on American, a little bit of salt has been needed for the soup to actually be good, and that was the case this time as well.

Luckily, I had been able to select my main ahead of time, which was the halibut.  It was not presented amazingly, but it wasn’t (too) overcooked (since it had sat in the oven waiting for me). The beans went well with it, and the sauce wasn’t overly fatty.

And I ended with a sundae as always. 

While this flight did not really live up to the standard that I’ve managed to get previously from Flagship First, I was extremely pleased with being able to swap to this flight from a standard domestic flight. 

In summary, being able to fly Flagship First for the price of a standard domestic first flight was amazing.  The ground experience in Boston without the Sapphire Lounge would be pretty boring, but even if it’s a bit of a walk, the Sapphire Lounge is worth it (5/5).  Compared to a domestic style recliner, having a lie-flat seat is amazing, but this seat had seen better days (3/5), and the service was not great (3/5).  The food offering was pretty good (4/5), but the IFE showing on this flight was poor (2/5).  Overall, the flight earns a 17/25 since it was supposed to be a full Flagship First experience. 

I booked my original flight in domestic first well in advance for about $600.  Swapping to Flagship First meant that I earned extra tier points and successfully renewed my BA Gold Status for 2025.  I earned both credit card points and Avios based on the (low) cost of the ticket.  I’m skipping over the LAX-SFO flight because it was a short regional flight that I’ve taken any number of times. Overall, this itinerary earned me 250 tier points, around 3 900 avios, and around 3 000 Amex points for a total return of about 15%, which is just standard.  But $600 for a Flagship First transcontinental ticket is amazing value.

Now that I’ve completed my Flagship First sweep, it might be time for a Flagship First analysis.