A year ago American Airlines introduced collectors edition Heritage amenity kits featuring red flower amenities honoring the airlines that over time merged to create the world’s largest airline. There were 9 different kits honoring carriers like America West, TWA, Reno Air, and AirCal. (American itself was initially founded out of ~ 80 different airlines circa 1930. The kits didn’t include every one, and didn’t include Trans Caribbean Airways from the 1970s or Lake Central, Empire, or Trump Shuttle from the US Airways side.)

This was the TWA kit:

Now American is introducing new amenity kits in March — a custom-designed Cole Haan bag “inspired by their pinnacle design and innovation collection, ZerøGrand” including toothbrush, toothpaste, socks, eyeshade and ear plugs and a 20 percent off discount code for the skincare brand in the kit and $75 towards a Cole Haan purchase plus:

International First Class Cole Haan kit with 3LAB skin care products

• “Featuring perforated detail and available in six different colors, this kit’s bag is inspired by Cole Haan’s design and innovation collection, ZerØGrand.”
  
• 3LAB M Cream, hand cream, lip balm, tissues, hand sanitizer, mouthwash, pen and foam headphone covers

International Business Class Cole Haan kit with C.O. Bigelow products

• “This Dopp Kit design is versatile and is available in eight different color combinations.”
  
• C.O. Bigelow Apothecaries lip balm, lime & coriander body lotion, mouthwash, tissues, pen and foam headphone covers

Domestic Premium Transcon First Class Cole Haan kit with Clark’s Botanicals products

• “This kit’s bag resembles an envelope with its folds and stamped exterior and is available in six different colors.”
  
• Clark’s Botanicals smoothing marine cream, lip balm, moisturizing hand cream and hand wipe

The amenity kits will be handed out in four rotations of different colors through March 2017. The first rotation will be the gray, blue and red kits.

American’s Vice President of Marketing Fern Fernandez says, “We want to set ourselves apart from the competition, so this year we teamed up with four amazing American brands to offer a variety of amenity kits for each premium cabin in a bag they’ll want to reuse.”

Source: American Airlines

Here’s the previous business and first class amenity kits from before they introduced the heritage kits a year ago, noting that the only difference between those earlier kits was the case, not the contents — business class was a toiletry bag while first class an iPad case.

I love to see the airline paying attention to these small details. For instance, with the new meal service on their Sydney flights plus pajamas in business class and coupled with the new business class seats they’re defying some of the concerns and expectations that had come with the merger. With low fuel costs and a competitive product environment US carriers generally are investing more. While you won’t find American in the same service or dining league as Singapore Airlines they do have one of my favorite business class products to fly on their Boeing 777-300ER, Boeing 777-200 (new business class), Boeing 787, Airbus A330, and Airbus A321T.

American Airlines Boeing 777-200 New Business Class