American Airlines Flight 108 Los Angeles LAX to London LHR is a B777-300 aircraft. I booked our award travel on October 24, paying 20,000 AAdvantage miles + $5.60 each for one-way tickets from Monterey, California to London Heathrow. The first segment was an Alaska Airlines flight operated by Horizon Air.
Loyalty Traveler – Trip Report Monterey MRY–London LHR AAdvantage 20K economy award: Horizon Air segment MRY-LAX (Nov 25)
I selected our seats in Row 16, the first row of economy class. I enjoyed a similar position on the last British Airways flight I took, however, the AA aircraft layout was quite a bit different. SeatGuru seat map.
AA 108 Row 16 seats in middle section of B777-300.
Row 16 Good Feature: room to spread out our legs, although the space between the seat and bulkhead in the middle section was too narrow for Kelley to extend her long legs completely. Row 16 on either side had about another foot of space where the flight attendant seats are located next to aircraft exit doors.
Bad Features: Since this is an exit row, no baggage can be on the floor. The magazine holder on the bulkhead wall is not elastic enough to hold a water bottle. The only redeeming feature for our flight was the person on the aisle of the 3-seat middle section moved to row 17 and we had an empty seat between us to place our things.
Big negative: Some passengers use the space as a walk through from one side of the plane to the other. When I flew British Airways in a similar bulkhead middle section economy class seat, there was space between the lavatories to walk. The AA 108 aircraft economy class toilets are next to the Business Class curtain and when the line for the toilet on one side is crowded, some passengers tend to use the space in front of Row 16 as the pass through to the other side. Fortunately this only happened a couple of times for us.
Kelley said she would have preferred to be in Row 17 away from the pass-through space of the bulkhead and with a seat that has movable armrests and a seatback for storage.
In-flight Entertainment
There were a good number of films to choose from the personal video IFE selection. Unfortunately I had watched most of them during my three round trips to Europe in September and October on American Airlines and British Airways. The End of the Tour is a film I really enjoyed. Jason Segel was great to watch as author David Foster Wallace. I also watched Lambert & Stamp, an entertaining rock music documentary based around The Who.
The music selections were not as extensive as ones available on British Airways A380 flights.
In Flight Food and Water
Kelley was disappointed at how bad the food was on our flight. She found the pasta nearly inedible and she was truly shocked that breakfast was served with no hot items about 40 minutes before landing with rushed service.
What she truly found to be reprehensible with the flight is no water service offered during the nine hours between the dinner meal upon departing LAX and breakfast minutes before arrival in London; at least none that we observed. I was awake and watching videos for about six hours of the flight. I had a water bottle in the seat beside me. The flight attendants may have walked down the aisle at some point during the flight with cups of water, but I never saw water service during the time I had my eyes open.
The State of Economy Class Travel on AA
This flight to London was my seventh transatlantic economy class flight since early September with three flights on American Airlines and four flights on British Airways. I have enjoyed the British Airways flights better, especially on the A380 aircraft.
Unfortunately, the changes to American AAdvantage places British Airways economy class a step down for redeemable miles and elite qualifying miles in 2016, unless purchased as American Airlines codeshare flights.
Loyalty Traveler – My AA codeshare luck for American Airlines reduced miles earned on British Airways discount economy tickets Feb 1, 2016
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