The American Airlines Airbus A321T is a 3-cabin aircraft with economy (including Main Cabin Extra extra legroom seating), fully flat business class, and 1-1 seating first class. It’s the most luxurious, high-end narrow body aircraft and the best narrowbody plane flying domestically in the U.S.

The plane flies New York JFK – Los Angeles and San Francisco. And they’ll run it JFK – Boston for utilization purposes, too, rather than sit extra hours on ground in New York.

They’re going to fly this plane on one of their Boston – Los Angeles frequencies from December 17 through January 5.

• Boston – Los Angeles, 10:45am – 2:29pm, American Airlines AA333
  
• Los Angeles – Boston, 3:39pm – 11:57pm, American Airlines AA1360

This is only a single frequency during the holidays and Boston is an increasingly competitive premium market.

United offers their premium cross country service Boston – San Francisco. JetBlue offers their premium cabin ‘Mint’ product on Boston – Los Angeles and San Francisco. And of course Virgin America offers a ‘better than domestic first cabin’ on both routes.

United Premium Transcon Business Class, Credit: United Airlines

What’s interesting though is that despite the A321T being a three-cabin aircraft American is selling it as two cabins. Fully flat one-by-one international style seats are sold as domestic first class, and the fully flat business class cabin is treated as main cabin extra coach with additional legroom.

That means,

• Elites are able to select flat business seats free

  

• Others are able to pay an upcharge as though they were buying extra legroom seats

  

• Business class seats still get coach service (although Executive Platinums get a complimentary snack and alcoholic beverage)

• First class gets just the standard domestic first service

This flight, and indeed most of American’s Boston – Los Angeles service during the period, isn’t pricing well but that may change.

First class on the A321T is the same seat as American’s international business class product on the Boeing 777-300ER.

Here’s business class:

I previewed the aircraft 4 years ago and flew the inaugural Los Angeles – New York JFK flight.

Hopefully the spare aircraft time they’re using on this route during a lull in premium and business travel will provide better than expected performance enough to encourage American to grow their long distance domestic premium product into a new market the way that some of their competitors have been doing.

(HT: One Mile at a Time)