Hi I'm Paul Stewart from Paul Stewart's Aviation I'm excited to be with my
friend Jeb Brooks. Well how do you do everybody, my name's Jeb Brooks from greener grass
dot com. You do quite a good Australian accent Jeb. Well thank you very much
I'm actually Paul Stewart and I'm currently here in
Washington DC the capital city of the United States and I'm looking forward to
my flight from DCA Reagan Airport through to Los Angeles Airport with
American Airlines in there Boeing 737 MAX.
And literally three hours after I filmed this the 737 MAX was grounded so instead
this will be a review of the 737-800 were many things seem to go wrong and
there's even an interesting ethical dilemma which I'll mention later.
The journey begins at the metro station which has a very unusual design with the
walls and a roof being made up of these concrete rectangles. It actually works
really well and shortly afterwards we were delivered to Ronald Reagan
Washington National Airport it was then a short walk to get our bags tagged and
pick up our boarding passes. Our tickets were economy, or coach class, but because
I hold the equivalent of Executive Platinum with American I was allowed
into the Admirals lounge which was surprisingly average as I expected that
a lot of senior public servants and politicians would pass through here
since it's so close to central DC. For comparison's sake, in Canberra which is
Australia's capital city, the airport lounges are amazing as the airlines are
keen to maintain favor with the taxpayer funded frequent flyers. I should mention
that the food displayed here was all complimentary although you can pay for
more substantial food. I grabbed a quick snack, awkwardly film the seats trying to
avoid as many faces as possible and sat down and enjoyed the view. A particular
highlight for me was this Delta Boeing 757 as we don't have those flying in
Australia, other than a few freighters, there was also this Embraer I think and
this stubby little Airbus A319 or 318 which looks as graceful and as
well proportioned as a cow walking up a flight of stairs. After more grazing and
plane watching our flight was eventually called and we headed to the gate. It was
already delayed by an hour because they had to find a spare 737 since the MAX
was grounded as I said before and eventually boarding began.
Now unfortunately the flow of passengers was incredibly slow and I
found out afterwards this was because someone had received a whack to the head
from some overhead luggage fortunately the damage was nothing major
although an ambulance came and the passenger walked off themselves.
unfortunately the delay meant that the crew had reached their maximum hours so
we sat and waited as they tried to find more staff. In the meantime I'll go
through my seat at 9A in more detail. It's actually a main cabin extra seat
which has a little extra legroom and free drinks. You usually have to pay a
little bit extra for these although it's a perk of having status with a one word
subsidiary that American Airlines let you select this seat for free.
The seat is fine for my 182 centimeter frame and importantly it has a good view of
the engine and something I really appreciate is the air vents above you.
there's also a power plug below you and I'll point out the row 10 doesn't
actually have a window so if you're an AV geek then definitely avoid this seat.
Another flight attendant arrived who thankfully volunteered to work overtime
and we headed for a runway. I might add that I really like the American's livery.
The red and blue in the shape of the flag goes really well with the silver.
Now coming up is some blurry and shaky views of Washington sites including
Capitol Hill in the distance now and as we take off you'll see the Washington
Monument in the distance. I'll upload the full takeoff in a separate video.
I was a little disappointed that I was sitting on the wrong side and wouldn't
see the National Mall but I ended up getting a pretty good view of the Pentagon and
Arlington National Cemetery which you can see down below now. I spent the
previous day here and enjoyed wandering around remembering the sacrifice made by
generations before me. Both of my grandfather's fought in World War Two
although the cemetery is reserved for US citizens. I did actually
read that there was one Australian buried here. He was onboard an
American C-47 which was shot down in 1942 although the wreckage
wasn't found until 1989 they couldn't identify who was who so they figured the
most respectful thing to do was to take all them to rest in Arlington
knowing that three of them were Americans and one was an Australian. The
view of the Setting Sun was impressive although I was keen to check out the
in-flight entertainment which streams to your device. The content was reasonable
and included live TV, TV programmes and movies I chose to watch this North
American X-15 rocket hurtle through the air which probably wouldn't be advisable
for an anxious flier so instead I settled down and watched this
documentary on Great Britain while being distracted by the sunset. As I said
before, main cabin extra seats come with free nibbles and drinks so I went with
the Chardonnay. The flight was around four hours and I
was feeling peckish so I also purchased this wrap and cookie
because, of course, American don't offer complimentary meals anymore.
I suppose it's kind of look similar to the picture...
After that I continued watching Game of Thrones only to have the person in
front of me recline and because of the design of the seats, it bent and broke my
computer screen now wasn't sure who was at fault in this situation. The guy in
front was apologetic and he was well within his right to recline his seat so
maybe it's a flaw in the seat design so would American take the blame or maybe
it was my fault for putting the laptop on the tray table which to me seemed
like a perfectly normal thing to do. As I said the guy in front was apologetic and
felt terrible so I wasn't going to demand any compensation from him
Thankfully I had trouble insurance so they covered the $1100 repair bill from
Apple except for $250 excess. Anyway comment below with who do you think was
at fault. I kind of put it down to be no one was really at fault and in the end
of the day there are bigger problems in the world although it was frankly quite
disastrous for this millennial not having a computer for several weeks...
especially when I had to catch up on Game of Thrones with the final season
approaching. Without a screen to look at I had to revert back to what used to
happen and look out the windows. Eventually the massive lights of Los
Angelos came into view and we landed into LAX. On one hand it was a reasonably
disastrous flight as I had selected it, even though the timing wasn't ideal, to
test out the 737 MAX and obviously that didn't happen. We also left three hours
late and missed our shuttle bus in Los Angeles and of course my computer was
also smashed but I guess it's little frustrations like these that only really
exists because air travel is now so cheap accessible. Even with the delays
it's obviously significantly faster and more comfortable than catching a train
or driving and of course flying over Arlington Cemetery really puts my minor
problems into perspective. From a review point of view it was fine and you can
make your own conclusions of the seat and food. It was a standard domestic coach
class experience with an OK seat. The lack of an in-flight entertainment
screen was really quite pronounced, though, after my computer broke down
especially for a four hour flight. As we come into Los Angeles Airport I'd like
to take this opportunity to thank you for watching and if you enjoy these
types of videos please check out my channel for more of them.
There's reviews of Emirates, Qantas,Qatar, Cathay, Japan
and many moreso feel free to subscribe and please click the thumbs up button on
this video. Also don't forget to check them out on Instagram and Facebook and
finally stick around for more bloopers from me attempting to film the intro
with fellow aviation youtuber Jeb Brooks. Thanks for watching good night mate I'm