With a 10AM departure out of Brussels back to New York, staying near the airport was a good strategy.  Convienently, at the time of booking the air travel, Starwood had a cash and points rate available for the Sheraton Brussels Airport hotel at 4k SPG points and 60USD.  In comparison, the hotel’s nightly prepaid, nonrefundable rate was typically running around 190 Euros for weekday stays.

The hotel is quite close to the airport.  Since the arrivals level is undergoing construction work, the advertised claim of “39 steps from the airport entrance” wasn’t quite accurate due to poor signage, but getting to and from the terminal on the departures level was straightforward enough.

At the end of checking in, the front desk clear had completely forgotten about the SPG Gold amenity.  Figuring that internet would run 10-20 Euros, I asked about it.  He stated my options and I indicated I wanted the internet (as paying 10 Euros for 250 points is a miserable value).  At checkout, the fee for internet access wound up appearing on the bill as apparently my amenity hadn’t even been entered by the clerk the previous day.

When this trip was booked in July, I was unable to locate any confirmable upgrade space around the dates we were interested in traveling, so I went ahead and booked the trip with waitlisted systemwide upgrades. While I would normally be unwilling to do this with United (as I’m unwilling to play systemwide roulette to discover I lost and overpaid for my coach seat), American’s systemwides work on any fare so waitlisting (and ultimately clearing) came at no additional cost above and beyond an ordinary roundtrip in coach.

As the date approached, I steeled myself for a transaltantic flight in coach with the solace of having reserved exit row seats at booking.  After a bit of observation in late August and early September, upgrade space in business class consistently opened up on JFK-LHR between 48-72 hours if there was at least two full-fare business class seats for sale.  The upgrades for this flight cleared at 54 hours out.

After enjoying the Flagship Lounge for a few minutes after boarding was initially called, it was time to head to the gate.  While boarding for group 2 (or perhaps 3) was already underway, the PriorityAAccess line still about 10 passengers in line.

American 138
New York Kennedy (JFK) – London (LHR)
Wednesday, September 12th 2012
Depart:  8:03PM
Arrive: 7:28AM
Duration:  6 hours, 35 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 777-222ER (N765AN)
Seat: 10H (Business Class)

While AA’s business class is far superior to the coach seat I could have flown, its hard product leaves quite a bit to be desired compared to some Star Alliance carriers (or even British Airways).  Once I settled in to sleep, I was left battling the appreciable 10 degree angle-from-horizontal of the fully-reclined seat.  To make matters even worse, a woman with a lap infant was seated across the aisle.

The flight attendant working our side of the cabin passed out menus prior to push back and began taking orders as we taxied.  He was trapped in conversation with 8H, so our orders were taken shortly after takeoff.

Early into the flight, 10E, the middle seat in business class in the row (Yes, American has middle seats in its business class as well) had a broken reading light.  After the two business class flight attendants (rightfully) concluded it was the button on his seat that was broken and distracted themselves from starting the meal service, he sought a full refund for his seat from them.  Ordinarily on a redeye, I spend my time sleeping with a bit of time spent eating sprinkled in if I’m on a transoceanic flight.  Evidently, my priorities have all been off:  Rather than care for a comfortable seat for the $3.5k I’m hypothetically spending to fly across the ocean, I should care only about whether I have a working reading light…

The amenity kit:

The menu read as follows:

The wine and beverage lists read as follows:

I had requested a vegetarian meal shortly after booking.  American’s vegetarian meal also stands in for its vegan meal.  The main annoyance of this comes in the form of receiving margarine, rather than butter, with the meal.

I took the on-menu ice cream for my dessert.

After dinner, I wandered through the business class galley and ended up speaking with one of the flight attendants.  While landing cards were placed on the plane, American’s ground staff at JFK had failed to place any FastTrack immigration cards for London Heathrow on the plane.  With a 2 hour, 15 minute scheduled layover, I less concerned about the connection from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 and was instead much more concerned about my prospects of having time to stop by the Arrivals Lounge for a quick shower.

I settled in to my seat and attempted to sleep as best as I could, limited by the “early” 7:40PM departure out of JFK and the angle of the seat.  During the dinner service, I had requested the express breakfast option and found myself woken up by the flight attendant about 30 minutes prior to arrival.  In retrospect, I’m reasonably pleased with this decision as I didn’t have a good estimate for how much our early arrival might slip or how bad immigration queues could be for managing to stop by the arrivals lounge for breakfast.

While eating my breakfast, I had firmly convinced myself that I actually hadn’t slept at all on the flight.  The non-EU passport line ended up being marginally longer than the FastTrack line, but it still afforded enough time to stop by the American Airlines Arrivals Lounge prior to heading to Terminal 1, allowing me to convince myself that I was refreshed and had actually gotten enough sleep to make it through the day.

Ordinarily, when I’m flying American, I use my American Express Platinum card to visit the Admirals Club while waiting for my flight to board. One of the (many) perks of Executive Platinum status with AA is access to the Flagship Lounges on international itineraries. (If I maintained oneworld Emerald status with a carrier other than AA, I would have Flagship lounge access even on trips entirely within the US.)

Sharing a wall with the Admirals Club, the views of the tarmac are similar.

In addition to the normal, complimentary Admirals Club spread of pretzels and fruit, the Flagship lounge has a selection of hot foods and cheeses around dinner time.  Overall, it struck me as being much more suitable for snacking rather than a full fledged meal.

While the sign was almost certainly necessitated by New York liquor licensing, part of me was left wondering whether its prominence was driven by prior incidents?

Alitalia is running a promotion for 15% off bookings made by noon (European time, 6AM Eastern) tomorrow by using coupon code WEEK15US for travel between October 1st and March 31st.  The promo is applicable to Delta flights on itineraries entirely within the US in addition to flights actually operated by Alitalia.

For example, a simple JFK-LAX roundtrip on Delta priced with ITA:

The same itinerary, priced with the coupon on Alitalia’s website:

It’s my understanding that these fares earn full Skypesos with Delta (or could be credited to Alaska).

Back in July, a brief fare war broke out across the domestic US carriers for travel from the United States to Ireland in the fall.  Around that time, I wrote a post discussing the process of finding an itinerary to actually use these low fares.

Because simply researching possible itineraries without actually going anywhere isn’t much fun, I booked one for myself and a friend who needed to eventually get from New York to Los Angeles.  This produced a slightly unusual, transatlantic (and backtracking!) way to get to L.A., JFK-LHR-DUB-BRU-JFK-LAX, stopping in Dublin for 5 days and Brussels for 1:

Due to the complexity of the itinerary, I gave up attempting to use multicity and called the Executive Platinum desk.  While this wasn’t actually a mistake fare, the agent placed me on hold for several minutes while verifying that $440/person was, in fact, the correct fare for this trip.

Since matching from Continental Platinum to American Executive Platinum in December 2011, I’ve had 8 systemwide upgrades on AA that I’ve been looking to use.  Up until this trip, I had been sitting at about 90k EQM on AA since May and had little-to-no planned international travel before their expiration date.  While United imposes fare minimums for its systemwides when used on international, long-haul travel, AA has no such requirements, allowing me to fly the entire trip in business class on the AA-operated segments.

Like my trip on United to Europe in January (for $680), $440 for roundtrip business class to Europe plants this trip firmly in revenue rather than award territory.  An award ticket in business class would run 100k miles (plus 20k foregone miles that were earned on this itinerary) and $130, a rather miserable 0.25 cents per mile redemption value.