FoxNews.com
Upgrades are great and getting harder these days. So when I had the chance to fly American Airlines' new Airbus A321T aircraft
in first class I took it.
in first class I took it.
Full disclosure: No, I did not pay thousands of dollars for a ticket, and I was not a "guest" of American. I spent 32,500 AAdvantage miles for the privilege of flying from L.A. to JFK up front.
It's a "high value" way to spend your miles for sure, considering that the current fare one-way is $3354.
It's all about privacy
The new first class cabins have just five rows of seats in a one-by-one configuration, for 10 total, all fully-horizontal lie flat, compared to the old 767 planes that used to fly to route with two rows of five non-horizontal seats in a 2-1-2 configuration
So there's much more privacy in the new jets, and all seats have aisle access (they're also window seats for that matter).
For those of you who abhor the idea of having to deal with someone sitting next to you, or having to choose between window and aisle, the new seating arrangement is ideal. But what's odd about this new cabin, at least on my flight, was that people were chatting with total strangers pre-flight. Perhaps, since all five passengers knew they had no one sitting next to them, they realized that could retreat into their private cocoon if all the socializing got out of hand.
One of the passengers was an American employee evaluating cabin service on the flight. I wish I had talked to her more—at least I got her business card--but I was too absorbed with the huge selection of first-run movies (best picture Twelve Years a Slave and Captain Phillips were on offer, along with 200 other options and 180 TV choices) on AA's new inflight entertainment system (gone are the Samsung Galaxy tablets they used to hand out, although they've kept the Bose noise-canceling headphones).
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