When I talked to them about my upcoming trip, I was informed that they had re-configured their seats and there is now a little more room to stretch out even in the Economy section.
So I thought I would ask y’all.
I weigh in at 190, and am 5’8" tall. I usually ask for an aisle seat, but if I don’t get one, I “scrunch” myself up against the window and hope I don’t have to get up to pee. I also take half a Tylenol PM, but it sure would make me happy to know that in addition to the “scrunching” I could stretch my legs out a bit?
Just flown to & from California using American. The seats are good - lots of leg room (I’m 6’1", my wife’s 5’10") and no problems there. However, booze costs $4 a pop, so if you like to drink, it’ll cost you. The internal flight from O’Hare to San Diego (inbound) had no food on the plane, you had to get a doggy bag from a bin before boarding. The internal flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles (outbound) had no food at all, just nuts & soft drinks.
US airport security is entertaining. There were half a dozen people at LA watching two people doing all the work. Worst of all was the tiny lady of indeterminate origin checking tickets, who spoke bad English which I had dificulty understanding (I assume it wasn’t her first language), didn’t understand an English accent and didn’t know that all tickets show surname/first name. Kept calling me Mr Neil, when Neil is my first name.
5 foot 6, and flew to Texas from London. I was quite fine in economy. sounds like you should be fine unless you get the Over-Perfumed and/or gutter-smelling sitting next to you, or your left handed and try to eat at the same time.
Either LOST reservations, etickets they couldn’t find. Or charing me twice for a ticket.
Yes, they wouldn’t LET ME ON THE PLANET until I paid them TWICE for the ticket.
Story: AA’s has this policy they don’t mention. If someone buys a ticket for someone else with a credit card (say an e-ticket) when you go to check in you need the credit card the ticket was purchased with to get your ticket.
If you don’t have the card, they will cancel the RESERVATION ONLY, and happily let you use your credit card to buy the now empty seat. But they can’t refund the money at the counter.
Oh no, that takes a LETTER with a reference code they give you at the counter and takes 8 weeks.
“It’s for credit card fraud and because of the terrorist attacks”
“And for making people pay twice for their seats. Good god lady, if I’m going to steal a credit card I’m going to have the GODDAMN CARD ON ME! I stick the stolen card in the eticket machine, it pulls of the reservation I then walk to the gate, show them my ID, which matches the name on the ticket and I get on the plane! Jesus christ, how stupid can a corperation be. Is AA trying to end up with a worse reputation than Eron?”
Quasi, if you can, find out what kind of plane you’re flying on. The AA website makes this a bit difficult, unfortunately.
If it’s a 777, you should be OK; I’ve only flown United 777s, but IIRC, they’re quite comfortable. You’ll probably face more discomfort trying to get out of Hartsfield (I live in Gwinnett, so I fly out of there, too).
Actually, I’ll be flying AA to Los Angeles next week – unfortunately, the plane is a 757, so I’m looking forward to doing my sardine impersonation
Interesting. Not to discount your experience, CRorex, but I’ve had no problems checking in with e-tickets purchased for me on American (as in my father purchased a ticket on his credit card and sent me the itinerary/e-ticket). From what you said it sounds like you checked in at the counter, but did you first try the new self-check-in system? I’m not sure, but I think that might require you to swipe the original credit card to check in. I usually check in with an actual human being, because I don’t trust machines.
I did check in with a real human being… they told me to go to the kisok and check in there… that didn’t work so I ended up having to buy the seat again.
I’ve flown AA 6 times over the years, each time resulted in terrible customer service, missing reservations, double charging, over charging, missing bags, late flights, emergancy landings…
Yeah, the leg rooms good compared to other airlines.
The annoyance is that they’ve cut out just about every other amenity - meals, drinks, music, movies - that they used to offer. But I don’t know if they’re any worse than any other U.S. airline. (Foreign carriers still seem to offer a higher level of service.)
I used to fly American all the time between Panama and the U.S., but on several recent trips I went on Delta. Delta seemed to be marginally better for amenities, but not by much.
Regarding meals, I used to get one on both the Panama-Miami leg and Miami-NY regardless of the hour of the flight. Then they restricted meals to flights that flew during official meal hours.
On my most recent flight, NY-Miami was during lunch hours, and Miami-Panama was during dinner. But I didn’t get either meal. They told me because it was because they had eliminated meals on all flights of less than 3 hours - but the two flights were 3:03 and 3:05 respectively!
It’s not that I like the airline food, it’s just that the timing of the flights dooms me to eat at the airport anyway, which adds an extra $30-40 to the round-trip cost (considering prices at the airports for even a burger and fries). And when I have to clear customs in Miami, I usually have only about 15 minutes available to gobble something at Burger King between flights.
We flew on AA from Seattle to Omaga via Dallas for Thanksgiving, and on the Seattle-Dallas leg the movie was free! I know movies are usually free on international flights but it seems like most carriers charge you on domestic flights. If you didn’t have headphones they had some you could buy for $2 that they encouraged you to keep and re-use.
Meals were just the deli bags, but actually I like those better b/c I can eat when I want to instead of whenever they decide to bring the cart around.
And yes, plenty of leg room.
Speaking as someone who’s 6’3" and 210 lbs I find it infuriating to see a 5’8" guy complaining about the troubles he had scrunching. Dear god you need perspective man!
Anyways, as far as I know AA has been doing this for a couple years now. The big push to add inches was hyped last summer. I want to say they added 3-4 inches to all of coach. The real score was United, they added like 8 inches, but it was only to the first 8-10 rows and not all of coach. Those seats were tough to get if you bought a discounted airfare or weren’t a frequent flier. I got on on a trip from SF-Chicago and it was sheer bliss compared to every other flight I’d taken.
3waygeek The plane is* a 777, so I’m looking forward to extra legroom, and perhaps letting them know I’m a former customer service rep (USAir might help me get the emergency aisle. Thanks for the responses, y’all!
I’m 6 ft. 2 and 230. I just flew American from Brazil and it was pretty comfortable. The seat was pretty roomy and I had quite a bit of legroom. I was rather pleased with the experience on the plane. Off the plane is a different matter.
I’ve flown AA a lot in the last couple of years. All their planes have more leg room than the equivalent model on other airlines. It’s wonderful – I don’t fly anything else if I can help it.
