American Airlines 777-300ER business class review: I was skeptical, ok?

If it wasn’t for the fact that I love doing airline reviews so much (and I want to try as many airlines as possible), there’s no freakin’ way that I would’ve picked American Airlines 777-300ER business class for this flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles.

Not that I’ve got a thing against American, but I can think of a lot more exotic ways to fly between Hong Kong and the United States.

But you know what? Now that I’ve done it, I can say (without a doubt) that this was one of my best long-haul international business class flights ever. No foolin’!

AA192
Hong Kong (HKG) – Los Angeles, CA (LAX)
Monday, October 23, 2017
Aircraft: 777-323/ER
Registration: N722AN
Duration: 12 hours 14 minutes
Seat: 8J (business class)

My full review of American Airlines 777-300ER business class from Hong Kong to Los Angeles

I arrived at terminal 1 approximately 3:30 PM to catch this 6 PM departure. I wish I had arrived earlier.

You see, HKG is a proper airport with proper airline traffic, and it’s very hard not to be mesmerized by it all without even noticing. It goes without saying that those 2 1/2 hours of wandering and planespotting went by in a flash.

The boarding process

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for watching this airport at work nearly caused me to miss the fact that they adjusted our departure time 20 minutes earlier than originally scheduled. This doesn’t happen often in my experience, and I’m not sure why they did it today.

It’s a good thing that I happened to be near the gate when they announced the boarding process. Once the initial shock wore off I was in line and one of the first on the plane. After the first class passengers of course.

Business class seat overview

My first impressions of the American Airlines 777-300ER business class product was very positive. However, I was slightly disappointed to see that the seats were very similar to what I had recently experienced in Delta One on the A330-300.

The seats weren’t exactly the same, but it was very close and I was feeling a whole heck of a lot of déjà vu as I was settling in.

Note from future me: this is identical to the old style Cathay Pacific 777-300ER business class that I flew in 2019. It’s the exact same seat, with almost identical materials and colors.

The amenity kit (and pre-departure service)

Champagne and orange juice were distributed on trays within minutes of sitting down. It was a nice complement to perusing the menu and amenity kit which were already on the seat upon arrival.

Every interaction from the cabin crew up to that point had been really good – not quite Korean Air A380 business class good, but close. It was a good start.

Once everybody was situated, the flight attendants began coming through the cabin and taking dinner orders even before pushing off the gate. I had totally forgot that I pre-ordered the duck entrée on the American Airlines website a month and a half ago, and was kindly reminded of that by the flight attendant when he got to my seat. Thanks, bro!

After the meal orders were complete, pajamas and newspapers were distributed. I passed on both. Hopefully this attentive service was a sign of good things to come!

The departure

Although they started the boarding process 20 minutes early, we were only five minutes ahead of schedule by the time we pushed off the gate.

The first meal service

The attentive service by the cabin crew continued immediately after take off. I had a steaming hot towel in my hand within 10 minutes. Not only that, I hadn’t even finished wiping my hands before another flight attendant swooped in with a tablecloth in preparation for the commencement of the meal service.

“At least they aren’t ignoring me” I thought, which ended up being a bit ironic considering they never came back to pick up that hot towel.

Dinner was served in courses, and that duck was spectacular. Thems the facts.

And like I usually do on airplanes, I ate way too much. More than I would even think about eating at home. Considering what the food was like in American Airlines A321T first class, I should not have been surprised by this. Piggy piggy!

In-flight entertainment

The déjà vu came roaring back once I started playing with the video entertainment system. Everything from my American Airlines A321T business class experience came roaring back to me. Everything (the size of the video screen, the quality of the screen itself, the user interface) was exactly the same.

Despicable Me 3 happened to be my movie of choice this evening, followed by a stand-up comedy show that wasn’t funny enough to keep me awake for more than 30 minutes after my meal tray was taken away.

The business class lavatory

Dedicating an entire section of an airline review to pictures of the lavatory means one thing: it surprised me. Really! I wasn’t expecting it to be so large. And stylish. It felt like a proper business class lavatory.

Seat and cabin comfort

I was able to sleep really well despite the cabin being illuminated by mood lighting. They never turned the lights off, which is OK by me because I quite like the ambience of a dimly lit cabin for sleeping.

The second meal service

The lights were turned on with an hour and 40 minutes of flying time remaining. There was no smooth transition into the breakfast service unfortunately.

There were no hot towels and tablecloth placements this time. The flight attendant simply showed up at my seat with the tray, set it down, and walked off. Ok then.

I sat there in silence picking at my lukewarm but decently tasty breakfast…which wasn’t technically even breakfast considering that it was late afternoon in Los Angeles at this point. A sandwich or some soup would’ve been more appropriate I think.

The descent and arrival into LAX

Flight attendants came through the aisles with hot towels about 10 minutes before we began our descent into LAX, and from there I converted back into AvGeek mode and had my nose to the window all the way in to Los Angeles.

The good news is that I didn’t feel overly exhausted as I was walking off the plane and into the terminal. Hong Kong to Los Angeles is a very long flight, and I knew for a fact that I would’ve been completely wrecked if I was stuck back in economy class for the past 13 hours.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. A lot more than I thought I would.