⭐ Overall Score: 6.5 / 10
Welcome to the Exec Traveler’s first review. Yeah it’s not the most exciting trip report, but sometimes the domestic routine flights need attention too. And this was my first business trip of the year so here we go.
- Pros
- Fast free in flight wifi
- Direct flight (that’s often not the case from a midsize airport) was early coupled with efficient boarding and deplaning
- Good streaming entertainment
- Cons
- No meals on this one despite being a 2 hour flight during a mealtime
- It’s better than economy, but still not an exciting first class seat
- No seat back entertainment
Booking
As this was a business trip I booked through our corporate travel agent. I was on my way from Dallas to Colorado Springs so this wasn’t a true round trip in that my return flight took me to a different domestic destination than where I started. However, the $566 economy fare was on the higher end of normal for the SDF-DFW round trip. I booked this trip a little less than two weeks before my departure.
Fortunately, thanks to my executive platinum status with American Airlines, this is a fairly consistent upgrade for me and sure enough a couple days before my flight I received an email from American confirming the upgrade. However, as many of you probably know, domestic first class in the US isn’t really something to get too excited about. My status also allows me to select any seat for free, but after the upgrade the available seats in first class were limited and I selected 3F – a window seat on the right side of the plane. My other option was the bulkhead, but I prefer to be able to put my laptop bag under the seat in front of me.
Airport Experience
Flying out of a midsize airport is convenient. The lines are rarely long and even though security can get backed up at SDF at peak times, that rarely happens to the precheck line. And for this off peak evening flight – in my experience SDF is busiest in the morning – I breezed through check in and security and had plenty of time ahead of my flight. No lounges at SDF so I just parked myself by a power outlet near the gate.
After a string of long delays during my last few flights of 2025, this first flight of 2026 boarded and left pretty much on time. Boarding was efficient and with no concierge keys on board, I was among the first to board with the first class group.
Aircraft and Cabin
First class on the 737-800 is in a 2-2 layout and I had assigned myself a window seat on the right side of the plane. The 16 first class seats have 37 inches of pitch and are 21 inches wide. While nothing special this is still much more comfortable than the 30-33 inches of pitch and 16.6-17.8 width seats you’ll find in economy. It still didn’t leave a lot of legroom however.
The flight attendant for first class was friendly and offered everyone a pre departure drink. I got very unexciting ice water, but several of my fellow passengers indulged in bourbon or mixed drinks that the flight attendant was more than happy to provide. I find American flight attendants to be hit or miss, but this was a good one.
Seat
The standard American domestic first class seat is nothing special, but adequately comfortable for this short 2.5 hour flight. The seat back storage is limited, but my rather large laptop bag easily fit under the seat in front of me and thanks to the center console between the first class seats, there was still room for my feet next to my bag.
The tray table comes out of the armrest and was plenty big enough for my laptop. There is an additional drink size tray table that flips out of the front of the center console. Each seat also had a power outlet to charge your devices as well as a USB charging port in the seat back in front. While there are no seat mounted tvs, the seat backs do have adjustable holders for personal devices.
The seat also had manual controls for the six inches of recline available, but I did not recline my seat on this one.
In-flight Entertainment & Connectivity
While there was no seat back entertainment system, American does offer a very solid selection of movies and tv (including live tv – I streamed CNN in the background while I was doing work) through it’s streaming platform aainflight.com.
This was also my first AA flight since they launched free wifi. It was easy to access with my AAdvantage account and was impressively fast and allowed me to even stream Netflix.
Food & Drink
This is definitely an area where American is lacking. While not a super long flight, this is still a couple hours in the air and all American offers on this route in first class is a snack basket (and even that doesn’t always make an appearance). At least on this one it was well stocked and had some new products on offer. While American’s snack basket concept for these flights is kind of sad, I do give them credit for rotating the products available and trying to attempt to feature smaller less well-known products. Some flight attendants can be strict about how many snacks a passenger can take, but the flight attendant on this one encouraged everyone to take two things on first pass and came around a second time with what was still left. The usual domestic beverages were available – I generally stay away from the wine which I’ve never found to be good – but Woodford bourbon, Tito’s vodka and other named brand liquor was plentiful.
For my snack selection on this one I tried the Hippies Nacho Vibe chips which were essentially Doritos made from chickpeas and were quite tasty. My second selection was the BISCOTEA Pink Shortbread. I’m a sucker for shortbread and this was decent. A little crumbly for my liking, but tasted like good shortbread although I have no idea why it was pink. I paired this with another exciting glass of ice water – sorry I was tired and not really in the mood for a drink on this one. I promise I will make up for this on other trips.
Arrival Experience
We arrived into DFW 15 minutes early and had a relatively quick 10 minute taxi to Gate C17. Since I rarely check a bag and didn’t on this one, I was in an Uber about 15 minutes later so basically the time we were scheduled to arrive which is about as efficient as it gets.