American Is Temporarily Renaming Their Flagship Lounges

Looks to me like they're following UA since they will soon have Polaris lounges for International Business Class pax.

It would be better if they called them International First Class Pro Lounges. Seriously how can they make these lounge rollouts take any longer, haven't they been talking about what they are "going to do" for about 20 months now? Maybe time to think about hiring a second contractor so they can get the remodels done before we've all retired.

AA Polaris...oh wait... Pole Star lounge.

Will one world emerald members not have acces to the new flagship or just not the dining?

Tried to visit the flagship dinning lounge in DFW before a flight to HKG in First a couple of weeks ago. Was rejected as the lounge was at capacity. Have never been rejected from a First class lounge before. I know this lounge is temporary, but sad when they can not accommodate an international First class passenger.

@ Brian Doughty -- They'll have access to the Flagship Lounge, but not the Flagship Dining sections.

Just to confirm - international biz class flyers will have access to the FLs in 2017?

@ Abidjan -- Yes, once the new lounges are open.

Seems like unnecessary confusion.

Thanks Lucky. Keep up the great work.

So will the "new" Flagship lounges be accessible to non-Emeralds? I'm assuming Sapphires will be relegated to Admirals Clubs? I guess that AA's required to give Emeralds access to FLs, given that they're entitled to FC lounge access by the alliance... That's one big advantage over UA, since (I'm assuming) Polaris lounges won't be accessible to *G. Maybe GS/1Ks, if they're lucky.

Not very happy with these changes.
- First why even bother to give it such an exclusive name when it is basically Admirals Club+ lounge (just to adhere to the OW Emeralds rules? but this is clearly just playing with words to satisfy the OW rules)
- why even bother to build the Flagship dining if more and more planes don't have First class - they should use the money to improve the quality of the lounge rather than invest in something that will only be used on mayb 100 or less passengers per day - of course this is very hub dependent? I think that they should have included Emeralds flying in J class to have access to these dining areas
- sounds like they will move some of the improvements seen in the Admirals Club now to these new lounges (based on what I see has happened on the new AA, the motto seems to be "Cut it from somewhere and move it " - just like introducing the silly Platinum Pro level)

Just my 2 cents on this "enhancement".

Cheers!

@ Mike, that's why Flagship dining will be only available to MIA, LAX and JFK since those airports have flights with a 77W (to LHR, GRU, SYD, EZE).

I will assume that AA ExPLT will have access to the dining option regardless of the class of service.

@ Federico -- Unfortunately EXPs/oneworld Emeralds won't have access to the Flagship Dining facility. It will only be for three cabin first class customers. 🙁

@lucky, thanks for the clarification, I was expecting that, too many AA EP