I arrived at Heathrow's terminal 3 at around 7.00am for flight AA115 to New York, departing at 8.30am. There was no need to arrive too early as I had already selected my seats online. When I arrived at the airline's check-in, I could not believe how busy it was. The general check-in line had several hundred passengers waiting in it so I decided to use the self check-in instead. That too looked busy but I spotted a line of a dozen of so travellers and that I could live with! As I went to join the queue, a member of American Airlines' staff told me the queue for self check-in was actually outside. Looking towards the doors, I saw a very long line outside, which I was made to go and join! This queue didn't seem to move and it was at 7.25am that I started to panic. With check-in closing 60 minutes before departure, I had five minutes to sort something out! The same lady who had sent me to the back of the line only a few minutes before then came out and asked for those passengers travelling on flight 115 to come to the front of the queue. The self check-in was a breeze and the wait for bag drop was just a few minutes.

I passed through security within just a matter of minutes and went straight to the gate for boarding, which, according to the screens, was already under way. As I arrived at the gate, it was clear that boarding had not started. It was very busy and even the cabin staff were waiting with the passengers. An announcement eventually told us to expect a 30 minute delay to the flight due to the late arrival of the aircraft.

Once on board and settled, it wasn't too long before the doors were closed and we were on our way. The aircraft - a Boeing 777 - must have been full. I could not see a single spare seat in the forward economy cabin in which I was seated. As we taxied, we were welcomed on board the flight, given an estimated flight time of 7 hours and 10 minutes and then shown the short safety video on individual television screens. This was a vast improvement on the 767 I had flown into Heathrow just a week before, which had no individual screens at all. It was pretty obvious that this aircraft had been turned around in the shortest time possible as my blanket was not a freshly laundered one. In fact, none of the blankets that had been left on the seats were in sealed bags. The same blankets from the inbound flight had just been folded up and dumped in the seat and the smell confirmed my suspicion. I threw the thing on the floor as there was absolutely no way I was covering myself with it.

It was about 9.00am by the time we were airborne and the first hour or so of the flight was uneventful. The crew started the inflight service and offered drinks, which are included in the cost of the ticket, except for alcohol ($6.00). A little while later, breakfast was served and I opted for the cheese and mushroom omlette, served with hash browns and a croissant. It wasn't too bad but the portion size was yet again a little small.

With the breakfast trays cleared away, I decided to sit back and to relax whilst watching a film. I believe this aircraft had the airline's new 'ON' on-demand entertainment, which wasn't exactly on-demand. Every programme started every 10-15 minutes so you could choose to watch a showing already in progress or sit and wait for the next one to start. I chose one film and it was due to start just a couple of minutes later so I waited.. and waited.. and waited. The film never did start and I eventually was presented with an error message saying 'temporarily unavailable'. And when I tried other audio and video programmes, I got the same message. The only thing I could watch was the moving map, which eventually sent me off to sleep!

I woke several hours later as a snack was being served - a pizza - and that was pretty good. In fact, I seem to recall them serving pizzas on my London to Los Angeles flight at the end of 2007 and they too were very good. Whilst enjoying our pizzas and drinks, the captain spoke for probably the first time in the flight, telling us that we could expect to land in 30 minutes and he asked the crew to prepare for landing, which must have come as a surprise to them, especially considering they had just begun the meal service! We were well into the descent when they started to collect the rubbish and only five minutes from landing when they handed out the landing cards.

We landed on time and soon disembarked at terminal 8. I had about four hours to wait for my connecting flight to Orlando, but in that time, I had to clear immigration and customs. Immigration was painfully slow, as always seems to be the case in America but customs were fairly quick. Despite being in transit, I had to collect my suitcase in baggage reclaim, walk it through customs and then take it to the bag drop desk so that it could continue its journey to Orlando. After I left the bag drop desk, I found myself in the check-in area. I went to security and through to departures where I waited for a couple of hours for my flight.

My next flight was AA1917, departing for Orlando at 3.15pm. This was to be operated by a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 aircraft, the same type that I had flown from Orlando to Dallas the week before. The aircraft are old, tired and very noisy (with their rear-mounted engines). Boarding began very early and we pushed back from the gate a few minutes ahead of schedule. A few seating changes had to be made because a lot of the passengers seated in the exit rows could not speak English, which was a requirement.

Our 2 hour 12 minute flight seemed to pass very quickly and of the four flights I had made with American over the past seven days (MCO-DFW, DFW-LHR, LHR-JFK and JFK-MCO), this was by far the best. The crew were friendly and chatty and the flight crew kept us updated with details of our progress. American's domestic product is nothing to shout about. A free soft drink is all you get but alcohol and snacks can be purchased if desired.

American Airlines is a very ordinary airline but their service is on par with other American carriers. They do not come close to the likes of British Airways and Virgin Atlantic but with considerably cheaper fares, they will always be the airline of choice for me.