American Airlines First Class Washington Dulles to Los Angeles in 3 Pictures

To get to Los Angeles, I often take the Washington Dulles to Los Angeles non-stop flight.

It’s so much better than flying out of Washington Reagan, for several reasons:

• Upgrade odds are better (Reagan is an American hub, and you’re in competition with more elite passengers).
• As a Priority Pass member, I can either use the British Airways Galleries Lounge in the morning, or the Air France Lounge throughout the day, which I think are much better options than the Admiral’s Club at Reagan.
• Generally, there’s less air traffic control congestion during the day resulting in less delays.

Washington Dulles to Los Angeles Departing at 7:10am, arriving at 10:13am

Boarding the aircraft, I found the crew in a rather jovial mood, which I usually find to be the case on this early morning flight.

Boarding the aircraft, I was seated in seat 5F, via a complimentary upgrade that cleared several hours prior. Each seat had a large bottle of water on the console, which are the bottles that the galley carts are stocked with. So you know, this is not a standard protocol, but rather a nice gesture from the flight attendants. It’s good to stay hydrated while flying, so I appreciated the bottles at my site, though they’re really large, and are rather bulky when storing in the seat back pocket in front of you.

This aircraft was one of the newer 737’s with leather seats, seat back entertainment and a controller built into the armrest. Overall, they’re fairly similar to American’s older style first class, with the addition of the leader upholstery and entertainment in the seats in front.

After boarding was complete, the aircraft doors and we were on our way for departure.

The climb out was super bumpy – so much so in fact that the inflight service didn’t begin for nearly an hour after take-off.

Breakfast on this flight was a choice between biscuits, gravy and eggs, or a steal cut oatmeal. Not having had the biscuits and gravy offering before on American, I chose this option and it was actually really tasty. I wish it had come with a small bottle of hot sauce, though.

For the remainder of the flight, I took a 3 hour nap (hey, I got up early…), and watched several TV shows, including Vice Principals, which is absolutely hilarious if you haven’t seen it. It was a bit bumpy towards the end as we passed over the Rocky Mountains, but things smoothed out quickly enough.

Service throughout the flight was very good, with consistent drink refills, and offers for snacks from the onboard snack basket. Very good crew indeed.

As is most of the time when flying into LAX, I love the final approach in.

My Take

As I said, I really do enjoy flying out of Dulles, and find it to be a much easier airport than Reagan, in many regards. The non-stops to LA (of which there are 3 daily) are the easiest way to get to LA from DC in my opinion, though will soon be trumped by flat bed seats on Delta out of DCA.