American Airlines has been swapping out amenity kits with new limited edition offerings with the same regularity that DiCaprio ditches girlfriends the minute they pass driver’s ed. The latest one is Raven + Lily bags with Joanna Vargas skincare items. These kits “begin flying later this month” with “upgraded contents to reflect a new chapter in American’s ongoing commitment to an elevated travel journey.”
The airline is touting its “investments” in “eye masks and socks.” Okey dokey.
Flagship® First and Flagship Suite® Preferred seats: A navy blue crossbody bag inspired by Raven + Lily’s best-selling Yami Backpack, featuring a hand-stitched kantha zigzag detail and a removable strap, making it perfect for travel and daily use.
Flagship® Business and Flagship Suite® seats: A sleek powder blue and navy pouch with a removable, thoughtfully designed, kantha-stitched wristlet strap — ideal for organizing travel essentials on the go.
Premium Economy: A structured magnetic leather pouch in navy or orange, designed to double as a sunglass case — an often-overlooked travel essential that keeps eyeglasses protected throughout the journey.
First, Business and Premium Economy Bags
First Class and Flagship Preferred Suite
Business Class
Premium Economy
This strikes me as pretty good for premium economy, but the contents of these kits remain almost identical from premium economy through Flagship First Class, and they’re really quite sparse. Where’s the comb; tissues; hand sanitizer; pen (for countries that still require paper forms); mouth wash; and chap stick?
Using nearly identical contents across all three classes of service no doubt has bulk buying efficiencies, but rather than being “an elevated part of the journey” as the airline says, they just come across as cheap – and cheapens the overall experience.
American’s new seats are great. Even the old business class seats are pretty good. Meals aren’t really elevated, but American’s long haul business class food is still better than Delta’s and United’s. Their noise cancelling headphones are great. Service is highly variable. Their wine selection is laughable. And the amenity kits fail to impress. The thing is that these last two are the easiest and least costly elements of the product to fix! But it’s a perfect encapsulation of American’s penny wise and pound foolish approach holding them back.
This summer’s business class and first class Brandon Blackwood bags felt cheap – more so than what American Airlines was using before.
Maybe I should just give the airline credit for pulling back from the brink with the cardboard amenity kits of two years ago. And these new bags could be better than the ones from summer…
@AmericanAir come on! Really? pic.twitter.com/f1NClr1l8w
— NC Man (@NCMan2020) January 14, 2024
The solution here isn’t hard. They just need to go back to the ThisIsGround bags and their contents from before the pandemic.
American Airlines knows how to do this! Even the 2022 amenity kits were better.
Lotta ‘blue and orange’… are they trying to be Southwest? No. Wait. The Mets!
I don’t know, I liked the Brandon Blackwood kits, and these also look nice to me – they don’t feel generic and the bags themselves are souvenirs. I don’t actually think the contents of the bags matter all that much to most people, and what AA is including in this kit is about what I’d expect.
As for the wine, agree 100%. It’s not drinkable. It’s champagne or single malt for me, and I’d love it if the single malt was upgraded a bit…
Creative metaphor to start off, Gary!
It would be a nice touch if amenity kits had customized products the same color scheme as the airline, making the items unique to when you fly.
@1990 — Ha, my first thought was the Knicks!
Oof!
what would also make a difference is if AA would bring back lotion of some sort in the business lavs (a la BA). i remember them having it in 2016/2017 and i think they had it in 2019. the amenity kits don’t have enough for those of us with dry skin who are in a super dry environment. would be a nice quick fix especially since they have the spaces for it in the lavs already
@1990 @L737 – It’s obviously the Broncos.
Not sure why, as Denver really isn’t an AA focus city, but OK.
@L737, @Denver Refugee — Surely, it wouldn’t be daaa Chicago Bears… (where’s @My Second Home is O’Hare to confirm?)
To be fair Dicaprio is dating a woman born last century.
Socks? Why? So you can walk into a waste treatment floor of a coffin toilet
Avoid rice sewage
The colors are kind of weird, but for American, this is a plus up.