Review: American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin SYD-LAX

After just having spent about 24 hours in Sydney after several days in Singapore, I hopped on another plane to head back to the United States. This effectively ends my flight reviews from this trip as I didn’t end up reviewing the final flight back home. Looking back at this flight, I realized I got a lot of movie-watching done and enjoyed some decently good food. Check out this review below of the 13 hour flight on American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin from Sydney to Los Angeles!

Flight Info

Date Traveled	Saturday July 13, 2024
Flight No. / From-To	AA 72 / SYD-LAX
Aircraft / Tail	B777-300 / N726AN
Flight Time / Distance	13 hours, 5 minutes / 7488 miles
Departure / Arrival	9:15AM AEDT / 5:31AM PDT
Class / Seat	Main Cabin / 39B (middle, left side)
Type / Cost	Nonrev / $78.50 (taxes/fees)
Loyalty Status	AAdvantage Member

Summary

• Middle seat made flight uncomfortable
• Flight attendants were very friendly
• Meals were decently good

Rating: 3.8 out of 5

Booking American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

Booking this flight was hectic! For this portion of my “Around the World in 10 Days” trip, I was only on the ground in Sydney, Australia for about 24 hours while visiting my aunt and uncle, and we had an action-packed day that involved lots of food and walking around. Knowing that it would be busy for me, I actually listed for this flight while in Singapore the day or two before. With it being an American Airlines flight, I could easily monitor seat availability.

Additionally, I booked a ZED listing with Delta since the Delta flight from Sydney to Los Angeles (DL40) left at about the same time as the AA flight. From browsing around employee traveler groups on Facebook, I also saw that the AA flight had been trending to be weight-restricted, meaning that the flight couldn’t fly full so employee/nonrev travelers were getting left behind. So having the Delta flight listed was a good backup just in case I didn’t make AA72.

Packing for American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

Like the start of my trip from Dallas to New York, onwards to Singapore, and then to here in Sydney, I just had my backpack and rollaboard luggage. My plan was not to check my rollaboard so that would give me flexibility to switch flights if necessary.

For the flight, I put my rollaboard up in the overhead bin, and I had my backpack underneath the seat in front of me. I made sure that my wired noise cancelling headphones were conveniently accessible knowing that the seatback monitors require plugged in headphones to listen to audio. I also made sure my iPad, charge cables, AirPods, and water bottle were easily accessible in my backpack for the flight.

Check In and Security/Customs at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport

I had my aunt and uncle drop me off at Sydney Kingsford Smith airport at about 6AM at Terminal 1, respecting the standard “show up 3 hours before an international departure” best practice. The American Airlines counters are located at Column J on the far right of the departure hall.

The departure hall was busy at 6:30AM! I had to weave in and out of passengers trying to check in!

Checking in with AA was pretty easy, but had a few steps.  While waiting in line, I saw there were 6 people/parties ahead of me in the Main Cabin check in line. And before I entered the line, I was asked a few questions from the Line Bouncer (not sure if that’s their title, but that’s what they were basically doing haha). She asked me how long my stay was, where I stayed, and why I visited. Once I got to the counter, the ticket agent verified my passport and told me to come back at about 7:40AM and stand at the end of the check-in counters where they will call standby passengers for seat assignments.

After I checked in with AA, I got in line for Delta since their counters are conveniently back-to-back with AA’s. They verified my passport and listing. Then I went to go somewhere to sit and wait.

Sydney Airport does not let nonrevenue standby passengers through security/customs without a seat assignment. This was similar in Singapore with British Airways.

In my head, I thought that whichever airline gave me a seat first, I would cancel the other listing. Then possibly have to run.

Who won? American Airlines did! I got my seat assignment at 7:36AM and immediately canceled my ZED listing for DL40 as I quickly walked towards customs.

Sydney Airport customs has automatic gates, but they didn’t work for me. I had to go in line to see an officer. I suspect that because I also had a Delta itinerary in the system, an officer had to manually review. No problem–customs went decently fast. It took probably just a few minutes to see the officer and go onwards to security.

Security also went decently fast. The signs were confusing because some said to remove certain things whereas some signs indicated NOT to remove some of those things. Either way, I didn’t have to remove anything from my person or bags except my belt. I got through security at 8AM.

Boarding American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

After going through security, I beelined to Gate 10. I had to pass some duty free shops and restaurants to get there. Luckily SYD isn’t too confusing airside nor was it too far of a walk.

I got to the gate about 20 minutes before boarding and decided to go to the restroom to change into sweatpants. I didn’t want a repeat of me spilling wine on my nice pants like on the British Airways flight from Singapore to Sydney! 

Boarding started at about 8:13AM with preboards then Concierge Keys. And because I was Group 4 due to my Citi Executive credit card, I was able to get in line when that boarding group was called. I scanned my passport and ticket at 8:22AM then stood in the jet bridge for a little while because boarding got bottlenecked. After about 10 minutes, I was able to finally board the plane and got into my seat at about 8:38AM. The back of the plane was pretty empty when I boarded!

Departure for American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

Departure was scheduled for 9:15AM. 

Somehow boarding completed relatively quickly despite being a nearly full flight. The flight attendants did make some announcements looking for certain passengers on the plane. It sounded like they were nonrevs–I wondered if they were getting kicked off? But I didn’t see anyone abruptly leave.

Boarding completed at 9:08AM. They closed the boarding door at 9:11AM. We pushed back at 9:18AM, then after taxiing a bit, we took off at 9:32AM.

Weirdly, I didn’t hear the captain say to get ready for takeoff. But we did, lol. It was shaky and turbulent when we took off to the south, and then we slowly banked towards the east towards Los Angeles. 

Cabin for American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

The Main Cabin on American Airlines B777-300 is actually two cabins split by mid-cabin lavatories at the 3rd exit door. The total number of seats for both cabins is 216. Most rows are 3-4-3 configuration whereas some rows are 2-4-2 depending on the location of the row. Pictured above is the more forward cabin, but the more aft cabin is pretty similar. You can check out the full layout at Aerolopa.

For the overhead bin situation, I was Group 4 for boarding so I had no issues finding one to store my rollaboard luggage. This aircraft has not yet been retrofitted to have the bigger bins that let you store your luggage sideways like a book. I should mention that the outboard bins (by the windows) are larger than the ones in the center.

The bulkheads have screens on them for a persistent flight map and other flight information for the duration of the flight.

This was a daytime departure so pretty much everyone had their windows open. It was hard to look out the windows because of how bright it was.

Towards the aft galley and lavatories, I noticed this sign on the door, above, that leads up to the crew rest. I love that it is also in different languages! On AA’s B777-300 aircraft, there is a whole compartment above the last section of rows that has 6 beds for the crew to rest in as they take shifts throughout the long flight. Can’t go up there as a passenger!

Seats in American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

For American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin seats, they are Safran Seats model 5751. I’m quite familiar with these seats as I used to work for Safran Seats as a design engineer! So it was a treat for me to sit in these seats for a long flight. Basically field testing for fun! 

My seat was 39B, which was a middle seat on the left side of the aircraft towards the back of the plane. Note that Rows 43 and 44 are the last rows.

The Model 5751 seat is meant for long-haul flights so it is a little more feature-packed than your typical domestic economy class seats. These 5751 seats feature:

• 31” pitch
• 17.1” width
• 3” recline
• Panasonic 9” monitors with aux and USB A connections, semi-private screen
• Handset
• Universal power port
• Bi-fold tray
• Literature pocket
• Adjustable headrest
• Articulating seat pan (meaning your seat bottom cushion moves as you recline)

I’d like to point out a few things about the seatback monitor. It is, indeed, touchscreen. But if you’d like something more tactile or the touchscreen isn’t as responsive as you’d like, you can use the handset to navigate around the entertainment system. To deploy the handset, you push the little black button at the side of the handset closest to the powerport. To stow it, you pull the handset away from the seatback to engage the reels, much like the power cord for irons and vacuums.

Because there’s a monitor and handset on the back of the seat, the tray table has to be bi-fold. This means the tray table has two halves. The half-deployed position has a cupholder. The tray table can also slide to extend towards you a little bit. The struggle with bi-fold tables is that sometimes the table halves are not level, and this was an issue for me spilling my wine on myself on my flight from Singapore to Sydney with British Airways!

Lastly, the seat has an articulating seat pan. A standout feature of the 5751 seat is its ability to move the seat pan when you recline your seatback. This provides a little bit more comfort as your knees and lumbar areas are in a less-strained position.

For amenities in American Airlines B777-3000 Main Cabin, all you’re provided with is a small pillow and blanket. Before takeoff or just after takeoff, the flight attendants will go up and down the aisles asking if you’d like cheap disposable earbuds to use with the entertainment system, but I always recommend bringing your own.

Overall, I liked the seat. Perhaps I’m biased because I worked at the company that made this seat, and I literally have an older model of it (front row version) sitting in my living room! My power port actually worked on this seat, which wasn’t the case on my incoming flight on British Airways, so that was definitely a plus. I did feel a little cramped width-wise even though the guys on either side of me were skinny. Also, I somewhat had to eat with T-rex arms so as not to bump into the other row mates. And lastly, I thought the literature pocket was big enough to hold a bunch of things including my water bottle, iPad and keyboard, and few other things.

Service in American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

Service was efficient and friendly for this flight. After we leveled off about 25 minutes into the flight, the flight attendants started their service. I noticed that there were two flight attendants on each side for the drink cart and 1 on both sides with the hot meal cart. This was the basic setup for each of the three meal times.

A summarized timeline (all times are in hours:minutes after takeoff):

• 00:25 Handed out moist hot towelettes to everyone
• 00:31 Special meals distributed
• 01:22 Got my meal (beef)
• 01:45 Finished my meal
• 01:54 My tray picked up; drink refill offered
• 02:10 Main meal service done for whole cabin
• 06:30 Mid-flight service started with special meals
• 07:05 Got my mid-flight meal
• 07:20 Drink cart reaches me
• 11:42 Cabin lights slowly come on for pre-arrival meal service
• 12:20 Got my pre-arrival meal
• 12:45 My tray picked up

I definitely noticed how friendly these flight attendants were. Given this is one of the Flagship routes, I know that flight attendants have to have pretty high seniority to be able to work it. So with that said, I assumed that the flight attendants who worked this flight wanted to be there. And that showed through the way they carried out their service, which I appreciated.

Food and Drink in American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

Because of the length of this flight (13+ hours), there were three separate meals served.

Main Meal (Lunch)

For the main meal service, we had a choice between:

• Chicken with couscous salad
• Beef with potatoes and veggies

I selected the beef. Accompanying the beef were potatoes, veggies, dinner roll, and mousse. The meal came with a small bottle of water and bamboo cutlery. I paired the red wine (Cavit merlot) with this meal.

The meal tasted alright. I found the beef to have a good flavor, but the meat wasn’t tender. The potatoes and veggies tasted bland, but mixed with the beef sauce, they tasted good. The roll was soft and not stale, and I definitely buttered it up. And lastly, the mousse was really good albeit somewhat watery. I knew I wouldn’t be getting a gourmet meal given that I was sitting in Economy Class, but this was honestly decent! Did the red wine pair well with this meal? Eh, kinda.

The wine had notes of vanilla and tasted of red fruit. I finished the mini-bottle, and my pants did not get a taste.

While I didn’t take a picture of the setup, various snacks, water, and juices were available for the rest of the flight in the galleys after main meal service.

Mid-Flight Meal

There were two choices for the mid-flight meal:

• Beef pie
• Veggie pie

Either choice was served with a lime ice cream bar.

From previous trips to Sydney and Australia, I know that meat pies are definitely a thing. And it makes sense that they’d be served on a flight. I thought the beef pies were really good! Savory filling and flaky crust. And then the lime ice cream bar was a good, tangy and sweet finish. The bar had a lime exterior with vanilla ice cream in the middle.

Pre-Arrival Meal (Breakfast)

For the pre-arrival meal, there were two choices:

• Scrambled eggs
• Fruit bowl

With the scrambled eggs were potatoes and bacon. And alongside were Greek yogurt with a little bit of granola, and an apple cinnamon muffin. 

I thought the scrambled eggs, tomato, potatoes, and bacon were pretty good. Though the bacon seemed too chewy for me. Not sure if that was an artifact of Australian cuisine and/or airline food. I made sure to add the granola to the Greek yogurt as that helped sweeten it a little bit. And lastly, the apple cinnamon muffin was good as it was moist with a touch of sweetness.

Entertainment and WiFi in American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

While I haven’t verified this fact with this aircraft being a widebody aircraft, I’m assuming that the system is able to carry more content than the narrowbody aircraft in AA’s fleet. With that said, I found the content to be similar to what I saw on my departing flight for this trip. While I would have loved to be able to share with you how many movies and shows were actually available, the system doesn’t provide a total count.

I feel like in a post-Covid world, AA’s entertainment content seems to be full of obscure new releases but good classics. These days I often go for the older movies, even if I’ve watched them before. But on this flight, I ended up watching mostly new releases.

One new thing I learned on this flight is that the kid’s section allows you to change the background. For some reason.

Navigating around the entertainment system was pretty easy. Even though this system seems dated to me, I still found it to be responsive, both on the touchscreen and on the handset. Note that the handset is rotated 90 degrees when stored and the navigation arrows correspond to holding the handset vertically in one hand.

One feature that isn’t present on the narrowbody aircraft is the seat-to-seat chat. You can chat with other passengers by just entering their seat number. The back fo the handset features a keyboard that you can use to type your messages.

Lastly, the screen is hard to see when it is bright outside and the windows are open. So keep that in mind if trying to watch something once boarded. 

WiFi in American Airlines B777-300

For the WiFi, I found that it wasn’t working or findable on the ground. I believe this is a limitation on the antenna and overall system that provides Internet for passengers. It did start working once we were up in the air.

How much is WiFi on American Airlines B777-300?

The 2-hour pass is $29 whereas the flight pass is $35. Recall that this is a 13 hour flight.

How fast is WiFi on American Airlines B777-300?

I didn’t buy a pass so I was not able to test it. Besides, I knew the satellite Internet service would be spotty while flying over the Pacific so I didn’t want to spend the money for it to be not working.

I did see a man a row in front of me who was trying to connect to the WiFi to use it for work. He had some issues from time to time, but it looked like he was still able to get some work done.

Lavatories in American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

As mentioned above, Main Cabin on in American Airlines B777-300 is split up into two cabins. There are two lavatories at the split, located in the center across from the exit doors. And there are two lavatories at the very back by the aft galley. The ones at the back of the plane were closest to where my seat was located.

I guess I didn’t end up using the lavatory too many times during this flight since I was in a middle seat. I used the aft lavs twice: about 3 hours in and at 10 hours in. Both times the lavatory was pretty clean.

An observation I had was that many people tried to use the lavatories after the main meal service. Good thing no one had the mushroom risotto!

In-Flight in American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

You know how the captain usually comes on after hitting cruising altitude to make some announcements? Yeah, that …didn’t happen til over an hour after taking off. Seemed weird.

As for what I did during the flight besides eating…

• 00:30 Watched The Marvels during main meal service
• 02:13 Watched The Boys In the Boat
• 02:45 Wanted to ask flight attendants about the crew rest but couldn’t find them…probably because they were using the crew rest!
• 05:00 Watched The Acolyte episodes on my iPad
• 07:27 Watched Boy Kills World during mid-flight meal
• 10:30 Watched Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire during pre-arrival meal

Lots of movie-watching during meals! The Marvels was entertaining, but not one of the MCU’s best. The Boys In The Boat was a really cool underdog story. The Acolyte had some interesting moments, but other Disney+ Star Wars shows are better. Boy Kills World was really cool! But maybe too violent… And Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was fun but kinda forgettable.

Sleeping in American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin

Knowing that we’d be arriving at about 6AM in Los Angeles, I wanted to get some sleep on this flight. 

Admittedly, even as I have traveled a lot, I still have a lot of trouble falling asleep in coach class seats. To keep myself comfortable in my Main Cabin seat while attempting to sleep, I kept my noise-canceling headphones on, I deployed the headrest wings to have something for my head to lean on, and I moved my backpack closer to me so that I could stretch my legs under the seat in front of me. I also used my eye mask to block out the dim cabin lights.

Was I able to actually get some sleep? I think I drifted in and out of sleep every time I tried in-between movies. I somehow got enough sleep to be functional when I landed, but felt pretty tired.

Stories to Share

Nothing too interesting from this flight. Pretty uneventful. And uneventful is good when flying!

The people two rows in front of me were very chatty at boarding and takeoff. Thankfully they weren’t so talkative during the middle of the flight when most people were trying to get some sleep.

Two younger guys sat on either side of me. I was surprised that neither of them got up more than once to use the lavatory. Both slept most of the flight.

The woman sitting in front of me was watching Cabrini and knitting. Totally a vibe that I appreciate.

And as a gamer nerd, I also appreciated that I saw a woman at the window a row or two in front of me playing a new game of Stardew Valley on her phone. That actually inspired me to get Stardew Valley on my own phone after this trip!

Arrival at LAX

The flight was scheduled to arrive at about 6AM at LAX airport.

About 12 hours and 25 minutes into the flight, the captain made an announcement that we’d be landing in about an hour. Then the flight attendants showed the informational video for US customs.

On approach to LAX, I saw that it was dark outside with the sun rising as well as clouds. It’s pretty much just ocean up until the coastline and airport as we approached from the west.

We touched down at about 5:43AM local time, and when we taxiied towards our gate, the captain came on again saying that US Customs and Immigration didn’t open until 6AM so we’d likely wait at the gate a little bit.

At about 5:51AM, we arrived at Gate 157 at the Tom Bradley International Terminal. I didn’t clock when I deplaned, but I did note that I arrived at customs at about 6:20AM (hey, I was at the very back of the plane!). And because I was Global Entry, I cleared Customs pretty quickly and by 6:35AM, I was out of there.

Bottom Line

Despite being in the middle seat at the back of this plane in Main Cabin on this American Airlines B777-300 flight, I endured the 13 hour flight. I had a tough time falling asleep, but the various little things I did to help make a little more comfortable helped some. 

With three meals served on this flight, I never felt hungry. And with plenty of content between the entertainment system and downloaded stuff on my iPad, I kept myself pretty occupied for the times I was awake. 

Overall, this was a somewhat comfortable way to fly across the Pacific Ocean. Certainly this flight would have been better sitting in Business Class or First Class on this plane type, but given this was a nonrev flight, I had to take what I could get! Even if it was a middle seat in the back of the plane…

This wraps up my flight reviews from this trip. Check out the other reviews!

• British Airways B787-9 World Traveler SIN-SYD
• Singapore Airlines A350-900ULR Business Class JFK-SIN
• American Airlines B737-800 Main Cabin Extra DFW-JFK

What do you think of American Airlines B777-300 Main Cabin? Lemme know down in the comments!