American Airlines - AAL > Reviews > The Best Transatlantic Economy Experience

Author's product rating:   

Food Quality	Poor
Customer Service	Friendly and attentive
Punctuality	Good
Space	Comfortable
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Legroom, 777's, Competitive Price
Disadvantages:	Meals could be better

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I have flown transatlantic 10 times (20 times if you include return flights), Virgin(3), British Airways(2), Continental(1) and American Airlines(4). As someone who stands tall at 6'4", the legroom issue may well be higher on my priority list than others - in fact, in deciding who to fly with I would list my priorities as:-

1. Comfort
2. Price
3. Timetable and routing
4. Meals
5. Service

Taking these factors into consideration, American Airlines is my preferred airline. They have adopted a policy of increased legroom in economy - offering between 2 and 5 inches more than other scheduled airlines. They have done this at a time when BA offer more legroom but only if you pay ~£450 more to fly in Traveller plus. (i.e equivalent of Virgin Premium Economy).

Those extra few inches of space may not sound a lot, but believe me, they make a massive difference to your comfort level over the course of a 9 hour flight. On my last flight, the plane was one of the Boeing 777's. AA operate these on a number of their transatlantic routes now, and as they are all fairly new, they are well kitted out - back of seat TV's, footrests etc. On price, American is at least comparable to the others so no real advantage either way.

From a timetable and routing perspective, I believe American schedule to the US is bettered only by BA in terms of the number of direct flights and the number of US cities served.

Meals on AA are not spectacular - pretty poor actually. Both BA and Virgin beat them on this count. However, it is not a big deal and I will usually eat what they put in front of me. It only has to hold me over for a few hours.

On service, I have found AA and Virgin to be the best for economy travel, particularly if you are travelling with children - they are very sympathetic to the additional challenges this brings. Virgin Kids packs are a nice touch tho'. The seats on the AA 777's are wide enough to fit most standard car-seats into which can be a real help if you are travelling with very young ones. Conversely, I have found that BA staff have a condescending attitude towards economy passengers, particularly if something goes wrong - and on both BA flights I have had problems with video or audio which could not be rectified.

On the one occasion something did go wrong with AA - a missed connection at Miami due to late arrival - they were excellent. Accommodation and superb dinner provided in an excellent hotel overnight.

You will note that I have not mentioned Continental much during this review. I flew with them to Houston once, the plane was shaking so much I was wondering whether it (and us) would survive the trip. The cabin staff calmly advised us that 'it always does that', but it was not particularly reassuring.

So, American Airlines will get my business. So much so, that when I fly to Orlando next year, I will fly AA even though I have to change at Miami. This adds about 4 hours to the journey versus the Virgin direct flight, but I would rather have 13 hours of relative comfort as opposed to 9 hours of digging my knees into someones back.