Introduction

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

In this review, I am reviewing the Window, Rear-Facing seat on the Boeing 787-8 – however, this is identical to that offered on American’s Boeing 777 series.

The Layout

This is seat 2A, which is rear-facing. I picked this seat because it has a lot of space if you’re working and have lots of ‘stuff’ you need around you.

As you can see, to the left (where my laptop is) of you there is a large side-console, and the same to the right (where the water bottle is). This is perfect for storing things around you! In particular when the food service comes you can quickly dump the laptop and any paperwork somewhere!

Privacy

Sadly, 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!

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!

There are two issues I found the seat to have:  

Firstly, of the things I found less comfortable about the seat is when it’s in flat-bed mode. My elbows were awkwardly under both of the side consoles – and it felt a little crampt!

Secondly, the seat feels every movement in the seat ‘linked’ to it. This meant when my co-traveller in 1A (which is back-to-back with 2A) moved, I knew about it! Whether this is an engineering fault, I don’t know, A similar thing happened on the 777, but it was less frustrating that this!

Table

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

However, one issue with this seat is when the table was out, you’re trapped! Both BA’s Club World and Club Suites, allow the table to be pushed back – but these tables don’t! This in consequence meant that the whole table had to be folded away to leave the seat.

This issue may be because the table is mounted on the ‘left’, which is the aisle side in this seat. But it meant for any bathroom breaks, I needed to re-jig everything!

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 generally doesn’t matter as American are happy to let me takeoff with my laptop on the side console! They’re quite laid back about such things!  

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. Some of those things are resolved traveling in a forward direction, however!

That said, there are some very cool views from facing backwards!