When we booked this trip for 2022, I had booked our flight back on Aer Lingus in business class to Philadelphia using Avios. When I had to cancel and rebook it for 2023, I ended up striking out on any business class award space for our dates. Back in March, I came across a $1400 business class round-trip fare from Dublin to Newark via London on British Airways booked via American Airlines. I went ahead and booked it, figuring that we could fly the first half of the ticket back to the US and cancel the return for an AA flight credit if we weren’t planning another trip to Ireland soon.

Around July, I received a notification that our midday flight from Dublin to London was canceled and we now had to take a 7am flight from Dublin to London and sit around Heathrow all day. Because the change was more than four hours, I knew that American would allow us to change to another flight. I called in and tried to get on the early afternoon Aer Lingus flight to London, but that was a no go. I took a chance and asked if they could switch us to the Dublin to Philadelphia American Airlines nonstop in business class. After being placed on hold, I was told that they could accommodate that request! So, now we had a nonstop business class flight for about $900 each (we got just over $500 back in flight credit when I canceled the return flight). We all earned AA miles for the flight and my wife even earned some bonus miles as she was AA Gold when we flew.

Our gate was upstairs at the end of the terminal in Dublin Airport. We left the lounge and headed over there about 50 minutes ahead of our flight.

AA723 787-8 DUB-PHL
Scheduled 13:55-16:10 (-5 hours)
Actual 13:44-16:20 (-5 hours)

It was nice to once again board and turn left. I was very surprised to see the Super Diamond reverse herringbone seats on this plane as when I had booked it and all the way up until the week before, it was showing the weird Concept D seats that have alternate forward and rear-facing seats.

My wife and I were in seats 2D and 2H and our daughter was in 3A. I had originally picked those seats so that our daughter would have a forward facing seat toward the window, but as it turned out, all seats were now forward-facing.

Anyway, we settled in and I immediately noticed that the seats were almost identical to those on the BA 777-200ER that we flew from Newark to London the week before. I did notice that there was no overhead storage in the center of the first two rows.

The seats had a shoulder belt for taxi, takeoff and landing. The only difference with the AA seat was no door, although the purser told me that those were going to be installed fairly soon with their new business class seats. The seat controls, storage, footwell and everything else were just about the same. The purser saw I had my own Bose noise canceling headphones and offered an adapter for the IFE, so I asked her to take away the Bang and Olufsen headphones provided by AA.

Pre-departure drinks of orange juice or champagne were offered. I had preselected my meal but I took a look at the menu anyway.

We pushed back about 10 minutes early and the captain informed us that we would have a smooth ride for the first four hours or so before hitting some rougher air as we approached the east coast. We took off at 14:03 and said farewell to Ireland.

About 10 minutes after takeoff warm towels were handed out and drink orders were taken. I ordered a Woodford on the rocks which was brought with warmed mixed nuts (not a package like BA). I had also ordered white wine for my lunch, but that was brought at the same time as the bourbon which seemed a bit strange.

My appetizer and salad were served around 30 minutes after takeoff. I selected a pretzel roll from the bread basket.

The salad was fresh and the added artichoke hearts made it a bit more interesting than the usual boring side salad. The tuna was also tasty. When the flight attendant saw I was finished with my appetizer, she brought my main course.

This prawn machbous was definitely one of the better meals I have had in business class. It doesn’t look too appetizing, but I assure you it was spicy and very flavorful. My wife had the chicken and didn’t really enjoy it much.

Dessert was an ice cream sundae with butterscotch and whipped cream. Yum.

After lunch, snacks were set up in the galley. There were mini-sandwiches, chips and drinks available.

I paid for internet service for the whole flight ($22) and I was able to watch premier league soccer on Peacock on my phone for most of the flight. I had the moving map on the IFE, but about three hours into the flight, the purser came over to check my flight attendant call button as they apparently all stopped working. As it turned out, the IFE and moving map had stopped working and did not work for the rest of the flight. We got 5,000 American miles each when I complained about it after the flight. Remember to always download your own entertainment just in case.

About 90 minutes before landing, we were served the snack. It was just OK. The bread was a bit too hard.

We landed a few minutes late due to our more southerly routing around some of the weather on the east coast. We said goodbye to our daughter who was headed back to college via an Uber. My wife and I spent an hour or so in the PHL American Express Centurion Lounge which was packed.

We flew back to Atlanta on American Airlines and we were upgraded to first class on that flight thanks to my wife’s temporary Gold status due to the partnership between AA and Hyatt. That flight was fairly empty anyway on a Saturday night.

We landed at Concourse E in Atlanta which was annoying as usually AA lands at Concourse T and you can avoid the Airtrain. Oh well. We grabbed an Uber at the international terminal and got home around 10pm. It was a long but comfortable trip home from Kilkenny to Dublin to Philly to Atlanta.

Up Next: Quick Review of United/Aer Lingus Economy Flights

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