Trip report: American Airlines' new Flagship First JFK > SFO

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My friend George shared this report about his recent flight in American Airlines' new transcontinental Flagship First from New York to San Francisco. 

My husband and I were able to use our miles to book American's new transcontinental First Class product from JFK - SFO over Labor Day weekend. I was very excited to get to experience this as I had read about the service from a few other sources.

We arrived at JFK and proceeded through security. One does have the option of using Flagship check-in, but as we didn't have any checked baggage and use our phones as boarding passes, we wanted to just spend more time relaxing in the Admirals Club.

Speaking of which, as a Transcon First Class traveler, one is escorted into the Flagship lounge part of the Admirals Club. This separate section has an open self-serve bar and decent nibbles. Two Negronis later we boarded the flight, which actually left on time and took off about 20 minutes after leaving the gate (that *never* happens at JFK).

Once we were seated, we were offered a glass of champagne, orange juice or water. The IFE system in my seat was quirky, but worked most of the time. The Bose QuietComfort headphones, common for First / Biz Class on all International AA flights, were provided shortly after takeoff.


We then had a three course lunch (The flight left at 3 PM), and I wasn't impressed with the main dish (steak) though the salad (mesculun) and the appetizer (Tuna & Salmon Sashimi) were tasty as was the traditional ice cream sundae.

There was a basket of snacks left at the front of the cabin, and requests for drink refills were promptly attended. In fact, the purser on the flight was one of the best I had ever encountered in all my travels on AA. I asked if she was traveling on Labor Day Monday as I hoped she'd be on our return flight, sadly she was not.

We landed into SFO 45 minutes early and quickly got through the terminal and into a cab, off to the dinner party and the rest of our fun SF weekend.

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