We spent an hour or so landside in the onsite hotel - the restaurant upstairs did have some nice views and the food seemed reasonably priced, but we only had a diet coke there. Back through security and we headed off to the larger of the two admirals clubs in the D terminal. The Admirals Club now offers free domestic wine and beer, along with well spirits, and drinks vouchers for Sapphire and Emerald One World members. Had a nice "cocktail" from their local specials and then a mini-bottle of sparkling wine before we left. Unfortunately the only food options are pretzels, biscuits and fruit.....everything else is for purchase. Service was both table service or you could head off to the bar. It wasn't too busy this morning, and there were plenty of seats around.
Having purchased food for the flight (our flight being under two hours meant that there was nothing to buy on board), we headed off to the gate. Priority boarding was just starting as we got there, and as to Emerald and one Sapphire One World member we got straight on and settled into our Exit Row seats. American Airlines have now introduced Economy Extra which on this Boeing 737-800 are the rows behind First up to and including the over wing exit rows. Interestingly the next two rows have a table across the middle seat, so whilst there is no extra leg room, they have move space between the seats.
We left on time and headed off to New Orleans. After take-off and once the seat belts were off, we commenced our inflight picnic with the food we had bought with us. The sandwiches bought in the lounge were actually very tasty and had been handmade to order. There was a film shown on the overhead monitors - headsets were $2 to purchase, and although you could use your own the volume seemed to be extremely loud when you used your own. We stuck to reading and our iPads for the 90 minute flight to New Orleans. There was the usual drinks service, with free soft drinks served in full cans rather than a small individual glass, with alcoholic beverages for sale. I settled for a can of spicy bloody mary mix (without the vodka) - my favourite inflight drink on American Airlines.
Flight seemed to pass relatively quickly, and soon we were on our final approach to New Orleans. Arrived at the gate a few minutes early and were off the plane with no problems with the airbridge this time! A fairly long walk round to the baggage reclaim area, with the bags coming off with the priority tagged bags first for a change. We then headed off to grab a taxi into a very hot and humid New Orleans.
