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Every now and again American seems to have a spare A330 or two hanging around with little to do and, luckily for domestic passengers, the airline decides to schedule it/them to operate a domestic route. Right now there’s an A330-200 flying between San Francisco and Philadelphia and, from later this month, LAX will get A330 service from Philadelphia too.
In its latest schedule update American Airlines has scheduled an Airbus A330 to operate on the Philadelphia – Los Angeles route from 24 March 2018 (LAX-PHL service starts on 25 March). [HT: Airline Route]
AA751 PHL 15:45 – 18:57 LAX (Daily)
AA670 LAX 08:15 – 16:34 PHL (Daily)
The flights are already loaded into the system:
From 3 April the flight numbers and flight times change slightly but the Airbus A330 remains on the route for the rest of the booking period (i.e into 2019).
AA700 PHL 15:50 – 18:54 LAX (Daily)
AA2083 LAX 08:25 – 16:54 PHL (Daily)
The Aircraft
In the opening weeks you’ll find a number of days on which the service is operated by the larger Airbus A330-300 which offers 28 lie-flat seats in the Business Class cabin, but the overwhelming majority of flights will be operated by the smaller A330-200.
The A330 will replace an A321 (of the non-transcontinental variety) that currently operates these flight numbers.
The A330-200 is a legacy US Airways aircraft and, although I confess to never having flown in, it looks and sounds like a very nice improvement on the other aircraft American flys on this route (if you in the premium cabin).
The Business Class cabin is a true international Business Class cabin and offers 20 lie-flat “Envoy Suites”…..
American Airlines A330-200 Envoy Suites
…..in a 1-2-1 cabin layout:
American Airlines A330-200 Business Class Seat Map – Courtesy of SeatGuru
That’s an all-aisle-access Business Class cabin on a domestic route!
Not only are the A330’s Business Class seats considerably better than what you’ll find on the A321s that normally operate this route but there’s the added bonus that there’s 4 more of them too.
That’s good news for upgrades.
That’s the good news….there’s bad news too.
The bad news comes in the Economy Class cabin where the Airbus A321 offers 18 Main Cabin Extra seats with 34″ of seat pitch and up to 18″ of seat width:
The A330-200 offers two fewer Main Cabin Extra seats:
American Airlines A330-200 per AA.com
Also, as you can see from the tables above, the regular Economy Class cabin of the A321 offer seats with 18″ of width (which is very generous by American Airlines standards) while some of the Economy Class seats on the wide-body are eye-wateringly narrow at just 16.3″.
Bottom Line
If you fly this route regularly of even if you think you’ll be flying it in the period when the A330-200 is flying I would set an ExpertFlyer alert just in case a miracle happens and American opens up SAAver award space on this route – this would be a pretty good use of AAdvantage Miles at 25,000 miles each way).
if you’re not booking directly into the premium cabin I would also make sure that you secure a Main Cabin Extra seat as soon as possible (or possibly even actively avoid this aircraft if you can’t book an MCE seat on it) – the Economy Class cabin doesn’t look like one I’d like to spend 5+ hours in.
Featured image courtesy of Thomas Naas via Flickr
