Review: American B787-9 Business (CUN-DFW)

NOTE: This review is part of a Trip Report that was taken in December 2020

After a great week at the El Pez in Tulum and Ritz-Carlton in Cancun it was time for us to head back home. With a late flight, we spent the morning at the beach before returning the car to Hertz in the early afternoon.

Booking

Just like our outbound, we were back on the 787 Dreamliner for this short hop back up to DFW.

Due to depressed TATL and TPAC demand, AA was operating their 787 Dreamliner 3x daily on this route and I managed to find business class tickets for $533 RT. This was an especially good deal as regular Economy seats were in the $400-450 range depending on time of day. I booked both tickets with The Platinum Card from American Express which gave me 5X points on airfare.

Check-In

We returned our car to Hertz and, after haggling with the manager about damages, we hopped on the bus for the ride over to Terminal 3.

With only a couple of people in front of us in the Priority lane, we had our boarding passes in hand and quickly headed off through security.

Lounge

Though we were on an international flight, American does not provide lounge access to business class passengers traveling to/from Canada, the Caribbean or Mexico (Except Mexico City). American also doesn’t have a lounge in Cancun so we headed off in search of the MERA Business Lounge which I had access to thanks to the Priority Pass membership that comes with my American Express Platinum card.

Unfortunately, the lounge was closed as we had one of the last departures of the day, so we settled for a quick bite at the Margaritaville restaurant as there weren’t many places open.

Boarding

After eating, I hung out by the windows and did some plane spotting while I waited on boarding to begin.

The Air Margaritaville restaurant was right across from our departure gate so we waited for boarding to start before grabbing our bags and heading for the jetway. Priority boarding was enforced and we were quickly onboard and turning left into the familiar J cabin on the 787-9.

American Airlines

AA 1507

CUN-DFW (Cancun International - Dallas/Fort Worth International)

Seat: 3A (Business)

B787-9 (N838AA)

Scheduled: 7:46p-9:45p

Actual: 7:41p-9:38p

Upon boarding, every passenger was handed a Ziploc bag with a bottle of water and a Biscoff cookie.

Seat

I assigned us seats 3A and 4A on the left side of the aircraft, the opposite of the seats we had on our flight down. The seat was your standard AA reverse herringbone B/E Aerospace Super Diamond seats. The seat was plenty spacious, especially for a three hour flight.

To the left of the seat were two storage compartments, the narrower and deeper of the two held the IFE remote and I never opened the other one as I didn't have many items with me.

The one complaint I have with AA’s business class cabin is the lack of any sort of color or branding. Sitting on the plane you had no idea what airline you were flying.

No PDB was offered and we ended up pushing off of the gate 5 minutes early.

In-Flight

We took off to the east and made a big left turn to head towards Dallas. Once in the air the FA’s sprung into action and was one of the best AA crews I’ve had in a while. Drinks were proactively refilled throughout the flight.

The meal option was the same as on the outbound, sandwich or cheese tray. I once again went with the cheese tray and settled in for the flight and re-watched The Big Short.

Arrival

We arrived at Terminal D 5 minutes early and, due to the late night arrival, there was no line at customs so we were through quickly.

Our Priority tagged bags came off the belt soon after we arrived at baggage claim and we were on the bus to The Parking Spot soon after.

Summary

I have had some very hit or miss crews on American over the last few years, but this group was top notch. The American 787-9 is a comfortable ride and much better than the “rocking” seats found on some of the 787-8s. It certainly beats the 737 and A320s you see regularly flying this route.