American Airlines Flagship Business (Window, Forward Facing)

Introduction

This is my review of the American Airlines Flagship Business Class seat.

In this review, I am reviewing the Window, Forward-Facing seat on the Boeing 777-200 – however, this is identical to that offered on American’s other Boeing 777 and also 787 series.

The Layout

This is seat 1L, which is forward-facing. I picked this seat because I was traveling on my own, and it’s a little ‘cosy’ in the middle – and I like to have a window seat. 

Unlike rear-facing seats, there is no side-console for paperwork – it’s instead more of an arm rest. So there are some drawbacks to this seat.

Privacy

As I wrote about on my rear-facing review, I can’t say that privacy was something to be commended in this seat!

There is no door, and the seats are angled as such that you’re basically staring at the person opposite you! BA, in their ‘old’ Club World overcame this, with the screen. But in this instance you’re literally starting a complete stranger over the aisle!

The Seat

The seat itself is very comfortable for sitting and working.

The seat has controls for various positions and more bespoke features if you want more precision. A factor I love about the seats is the memory recall option – which means when you’ve found the perfect spot, you can put it back to where you were after a bathroom break!

There is ample room for stretching out and general leg room – even if you are very tall!

Unlike the rear-facing seat I reviewed in Flagship business, I found this to be more spacious – possibly because the arm rest on the left moved up and down. I also didn’t find the ‘rocking’ from the conjoined seat to be as bad.

Table

The table is fair in size – and I didn’t find it to be too bendy whilst I was working on it!

Unlike the rear-facing seat, I found I could move the table out of the way for bathroom breaks, so I didn’t feel less trapped. I guess this is because the table comes out of ‘window side’ rather than ‘aisle side’.  

Storage

There are really only two areas for storage. One is under the foot rest, and another in a small compartment next to the window.

In my case, it doesn’t matter as American are happy to let me takeoff with my laptop on the spacious side console!  

It would have been nice to have some more defined laptop storage, or something more than what exists.

Charging/Power

One thing I like about the seat is that there are two multi-use power sockets, as well as two USB’s – so this made is easy to charge multiple devices at once! 

Conclusion

This is a very comfortable way to travel trans-Atlantic. However, there are a few things that don’t seem to have been quite thought through.

If you have a lot of work/paperwork to do en-route, I’d say rear-facing is really valuable for space. However, if you’re after more comfort and flexibility, don’t want the novelty of facing backwards –  facing forwards is probably an easier space to negotiate with.