What is American Airlines 787-8 Premium Economy like from Philadelphia to Dublin?

American Airlines have constantly impressed me this year, and after my outbound flight I was quite looking forward to the return. AA use the Boeing 787-8 on the route from Philadelphia to Dublin, which is quite comfortable.

You can pre-order your meal up to 30 days in advance of flying and this time I elected to try the Asian Vegetarian special meal. The standard choices were beef or pasta and while I really like the beef, I’ve had it a number of times this year and wanted something different.

Philadelphia Airport

I arrived from Cleveland into Terminal F, and took the handy bus over to Terminal A. After some wandering (read: I got lost) I found the lounge, which was quite underwhelming. It will be nice when the new Flagship Lounge is finished, that’s for sure.

Dublin was announced in the lounge, so I headed down to the gate to wait for boarding to begin. After a short time, the various groups began to move and once I heard Group 2, it was my turn to join them.

AA722 – Philadelphia to Dublin (PHL-DUB)
10 December 2022
Boeing 787-8 – N814AA
Seat: Premium Economy 9A
Departure: 21:23 Arrival: 08:40

Once my boarding pass had been scanned and my Passport scrutinised, I sauntered down the aerobridge and onto the aircraft. The crew greeted me on arrival and I turned right into the Premium Economy class cabin.

Premium Economy Seating

There are 28 seats in Premium Economy, arranged over five rows as you can see on the seat map. I’d selected row 9 and noticed before flight that the cabin was fully booked for this sector from Philadelphia to Dublin.

At the seat was a pack with a blanket, pillow and headphones, plus there was a bottle of water. There are foot rests in the seat in front, but mine would not correctly come out. Oh well!

What About The Main Cabin?

Since I was quick, I managed to get some views of the Main Cabin, or Economy Class to you and me. It is also comfortable and I have flown in it before.

Plenty of people started arriving on board, so I got out of there and settled into my seat. A guy came by later in the process and sat next to me, and proceeded to take out an array of items for his flight. Once boarding was complete, we saw the safety video and headed off to Ireland.

Dinner Time!

It is not a long flight across the Atlantic from the east coast to Eire, so I appreciated the fact the dinner service commenced very swiftly. I was grudgingly handed my special meal, without any cutlery. As it was Asian Vegetarian, it was bound to be a curry and it was!

After everyone else was served, my cutlery came from across the aisle. At the same time I was handed a salad saying, “this must be for you?” – who knows, I took it anyway, but I didn’t eat it as I quite frankly had tons of food.

I’m not entirely sure why I was getting the stink eye service for having a special meal, but I didn’t let it bother me. As I’ve found with the AA food lately, it was all very good.

The curry was quite tasty, and I really enjoyed the dessert. Such a nice mixture of tastes! All round, I was quite happy with the food. Soon after, everything was cleared away and the lights went down so people could sleep.

Flying from Dublin to Philadelphia

I really need to remember that I hate sitting in the window seat on overnight flights. I’m rather loathe to wake up people sitting next to me to get up, so I put the blanket over me (it was a bit chilly, but I’ll take that over a hot cabin any day of the week) and tried to sleep.

Various contortions took place during the flight and suddenly the cabin lights were coming up. Had I slept? I must have, as the time seemed to have flown by. That woke up my seatmate and he got up which meant I had free reign to visit the facilities myself. Good times!

Let’s Have Breakfast!

When ordering my Asian Vegetarian meal, I had forgotten this would also include breakfast. What would I get? Well, it was certainly something. I was still pretty full from dinner only a few hours earlier.

I have no idea what it was I ate, but the round things went with the mildly spicy red sauce quite well. Fresh fruit was lovely, as was the yoghurt. By now I was being served by more pleasant people, so that was nice. Once done, all was cleared away and we landed on time in Dublin.

Overall Thoughts

American Airlines Premium Economy is a perfectly comfortable way to cross the Atlantic from the USA to Europe. There is plenty of good quality food served and apart from the minor quibble in the beginning with some attitude (which really came across as “you’re putting us out by having a special meal”), the service was otherwise fine.

I probably wouldn’t order the Asian Vegetarian meal again. While the main was quite nice, the breakfast was not really to my taste. That said, it wasn’t some variant of egg, which I generally like to avoid when flying at breakfast time as it’s usually so crappy. Only poached egg is nice reheated on a plane. I’d certainly fly again in Premium Economy on AA with no quibbles.

What do you think of American Airlines’ Premium Economy class? Have you flown it? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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