Me @NonStopsAviation has been to many places, some well known like New York City 🗽🍎 Los Angeles 🌴📸 Punta Cana, Dominican Republic 🇩🇴 Dubai, UAE 🇦🇪 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 🇧🇷 and Male, Maldives 🇲🇻 along with many more underrated ones like Recife, Brazil 🇧🇷 Nadi, Fiji 🇫🇯 Skiathos, Greece 🇬🇷 and even ANTARCTICA 🇦🇶 not to mention more coming like Montevideo, Uruguay 🇺🇾 and even visiting the other polar pole. However after all these places I’m still yet to visit arguably the most popular city that tourists visit, it’s in Europe it’s known to be “romantic” and it’s in France 🇫🇷
Yes believe it or not, I am yet to visit Paris and I wanted to do it eventually to say I’ve been there since it would be strange to present myself as a world traveler been to some obscure destinations but not Paris so I’m finally doing it today but I’m not venturing to Paris alone, my Mom and Dad are coming along with me and my Mom has ALWAYS wanted to go and since it’s her birthday today and I managed to find a good deal on American Airlines and British Airways to CDG via London, UK 🇬🇧 in business class, I knew we just had to do it so I’m pretty excited for this trip. Same old deal as always, we arrived at Miami International Airport’s north terminal where AA flies out of and while all 3 of us are checked in online, we still needed to drop our bags off which did take some time since the area was PACKED but it wasn’t too long of a wait and we soon made it to the checkpoint with a small issue, I am the ONLY one with pre check my parents don’t have it so we had to go through separate checkpoints and while the pre check line was non existent, the regular line was PACKED and it took them 30 minutes to clear security but we arrived at MIA earlier than usual so no big deal and we did that for one reason,
The flagship lounge, you see I don’t visit this lounge often since I’m rarely in a qualifying cabin and route to access it but today was a special occasion so all 3 of us spent a nice 2 hours here having light bites to eat, getting work done and even showering 🚿 and changing into our PJs before our flight, everything was great the food, Wi-Fi and the shower was a PERFECT temperature not to mention the decor of the lounge is very nice and we also had some of the FRIENDLIEST staff I’ve ever had in my 20 years of flying American so AA didn’t disappoint today with lounge experience and it won’t later on as there is special surprise waiting for us at LHR 👀 but now it’s off to gate D21 where our ride to the UK 🇬🇧 is waiting for us!
FLIGHT INFO
Origin: Miami Intl 🇺🇸 (KMIA)
Destination: London Heathrow 🇬🇧 (EGLL)
Flight Time: 8:01 (including go around)
Boeing 777-300ER (American Airlines)
Server: Expert
After a pretty lengthy walk from the flagship lounge we have arrived at gate D21 where N718AN, A December 2012 built Boeing 777-300ER delivered straight to American their 2nd ever B77W was waiting for us after spending the whole day here after arriving at 5:00am from Buenos Aires, Argentina 🇦🇷 a city I plan to revisit one day soon! And today or tomorrow really, we’ll see if the European counterpart is better than BA. Boarding was commenced on time and as business class passengers, we boarded pretty early today like right after the usual pre boarders.
The 777-300ER is Americans flagship aircraft and naturally it’s the biggest and most premium aircraft they have having a total of 304 seats across 4 cabin classes upon boarding you will find AAs small 8 seater, soon to be retired flagship first cabin utilizing Safran Flagship Suites in a 1-2-1 configuration. Unfortunately these weren’t bookable at all so it’s sad to see them empty on their last days at AA. This doesn’t mean I wasn’t excited to see the 52 Safran Cirrus II seats in a 1-2-1 configuration making up the flagship business cabin where we will be spending this transatlantic hope in tonight. We were all seated in row 6 with me the AvGeek I am being in 6A while my parents are in 6D and G together. Waiting for me on the seat was a standard water bottle, a menu card, the bedding kit provided by Casper, an amenity kit, slippers and these really great Bang & Olufsen headphones! So far I don’t have any complaints about all the amenities we had waiting at our seats and I’m truly a happy panda 🐼 but how will the meals, IFE and service be? Well we will have to wait and see but right before pushback we were offered be pre departure beverages and I chose a Gin and Tonic and it was strangely served in a plastic cup, I asked why and it was to save the glasses for the actual meal services so it’s a bit weird to have plastic cups up in business class but it’s no big deal as we’ll see them later. We pushed back right on time to begin our 8 hour trip across the Atlantic 🌊 when I first arrived at MIA the airport was doing reverse ops so I was kind of anticipating a runway 26L departure but while in the lounge, the wind changed and it was back to normal ops so it’s off to RWY 8R instead
Now the B77Ws GE90 engines are very loud, even back in economy class they still generate a good amount of noise but right next to the engine up in business, provided the true GE90 roar we all know and love ❤️
Hearing the GE90 roar while flying right above downtown Miami 🏝️😎 is a legit FEVER DREAM. This will always remain as a core memory of mine and I’m happy I made the right choice to sight on the left side.
After a very stunning departure from MIA both on the visual and sound side, we have reached our cruising altitude of 33,000ft right north of the Bahamas 🇧🇸 the crew up here began their service immediately and were extremely social all greeting us by name and even going as far as coming around every 10 MINUTES or so while the cabin lights were on so what did I have to eat? I had a nice roasted chicken along with rice and asparagus 🍚🍗 it came along with a very nice salad 🥗 a warm bread roll 🍞 and even a very nice ice cream sundae 🍨 for dessert and it was VERY GOOD! the good meal along with nice crew earns the service tonight an instant 5 stars!!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ well done American 👏 the lights were soon dimmed out and it was to get some shut eye which wasn’t hard at all with the comfortable seat and comfortable bedding.
I didn’t want to sleep for long since I wanted to make the most of this experience so I woke up around an hour before breakfast service to experience the IFE, the system used is the Panasonic eX2 AVOD system featuring live TV and as a @NonStopsAviation tradition, opted out of purchasing Wi-Fi. I put on some Bing Bang Theory for the remainder of the flight and soon enough it was time for both the sunrise 🌅 and breakfast off the coast of Ireland 🇮🇪 we got a pretty standard breakfast for a US carrier which was an omelette along with a bowl of yogurt with granola 🍦 a bowl of fruit 🍉 a croissant 🥐 and a tea ☕️ to begin our day as well be stepping into the UK 🇬🇧 pretty soon. It was also a good meal although like I seem to notice on a lot of carriers I fly, it was no where near the quality of the dinner service but still good nonetheless. I got up and took one last stroll around the aircraft right before the captain announced we’d be beginning our descent into London.
Our approach would take us heading south east over the northern towns on right downwind before turning right base around central London before shooting the straight in approach into LHRs RWY 27R. And here is that base turn with a view along the River Thames overlooking central London and even a look at London City Airport. The closest but most restrictive out of all the London airports and I was pretty happy to be back in the UK 🇬🇧 and couldn’t wait to get on the ground.
Soon enough, the gear and flaps came down which usually means the experience is pretty much over and we’ll be landing soon and I was super happy to be back at Heathrow since I’ve always wanted to come back but as we were about to touchdown I heard something
VROOMMMMM
And sure enough we went around which was a but annoying for some passengers but for me and my parents, it wasn’t a big deal as the 3 of us didn’t mind an extra few minutes in this seat and it provided an AMAZING aerial view of Heathrow with terminal 3 the iconic ATC tower and even a British Airways Airbus A380 parked at terminal 5. We soon turned right to rejoin the traffic pattern to retry a RWY 27R landing again.
After seeing the SAME VIEW over London and same approach, we have finally touched down on RWY 27R ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the United Kingdom! 🇬🇧 and I honestly don’t know where to start, the seat? Great! Food? Awesome! Crew? Spectacular! Lounge? Incredible! I honestly found nothing to complain about on todays experience, it was nice to not only fly Americans flagship aircraft again on a long haul flight, but also being able to fly in one of their flagship products and on an unrelated note, to be back in Heathrow and I’m happy to say I’ll be experiencing this again next weekend on my flight back to the 305 🏝️😎 on an all daytime flight to get the true 0 sleep experience of it. I’m truly excited to see the new flagship suites AA is rolling out on their newer Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners and Airbus A321XLRs!
After a year and a half of or so, I was finally back inside of Heathrow and before I forget about it, the crew actually let us keep the headphones until we parked at the gate, usually they are collected 30 minutes before landing but hey, I’m not complaining about being able to watch content for much longer than usual. Passport control 🛂 here was pretty smooth and simply involved a quick passport scan and face recognition and we were cleared to enter the UK! 🇬🇧 our bags didn’t take too long to come and we were soon set to continue our transfer but we couldn’t leave before visiting a certain place, American has a small arrivals lounge here at LHR which is kind of an admirals club and we spent a small amount of time here getting a light bite to eat and ANOTHER shower 🚿 the arrivals lounge also seems like a good place to wrap up part 1 of this trip to Paris, France 🇫🇷 I’m glad you joined me on this flagship business flight on Americans Boeing 777-300ER from Miami 🏝️😎 to London Heathrow 🇬🇧 stay tuned for tomorrow as I continue the journey to CDG on British Airways on their Airbus A320 in Club Europe and as always between now and the next time, see you in the sky! 😉👋