After security, the one thing that was really open was the food court - I had a lovely breakfast pizza from the California Pizza Kitchen. The airport in HNL is all open plan with no windows which is very different - you feel like you can almost touch the planes. In addition is is shared with the USAF (and in particular the runway) - on the way out you get some great views of USAF airplanes parked up. As we didn't have much time, we headed to the gate and boarding started almost as soon as we got there. First boarded first and then any status passengers - I was the only one and I was only BA silver!! On board nice and early, means you can get sorted and bags up before the flight fills up (again a full flight). I had the window seat on this route, although the third person in our row was skinny this time. An on time pushback, short taxi past all the USAF planes and then it was bye bye to Honolulu! During the initial stages of the climb you could see the peaks of the volcanos on the other islands peaking up through the cloud. It was then the pacific ocean for about five hours until we started to see the Western Seaboard of the US! A right turn, and then down to LAX for an on time arrive.
Service during the flight was as good as it had been on the outbound - regular drinks rounds and I really like the fact that you get full sized cans on AA (rather than small ones). As we had eaten at the airport, we declined to purchase any of the breakfast options on this flight. Again spent the flight reading a book and the occasional glance out of the window to see if we had reached land yet!
On arrival, it was a short walk down to domestic bag reclaim. Unfortunately the only glitch on the whole flight is that it took ages and ages for the bags to come out - although priority tagging seemed to work and ours were out fairly near the front.
Having seen the seats in AA Domestic First - they are similar (although a little wider) than VS premium economy in terms of space and recline. They do get a full meal service and free bar on the flight, but not sure it warrants the four times the price it was at the time of booking (although if you want BA Exec tier points it was 15 one way in cheapest coach, but I think you get 180 each way on booked domestic first on this route!).
