Review of American Airlines flight from Chicago to Madrid in Business

Hi guys, welcome along to another flight review. This one will be taking us from Chicago over to Madrid aboard American Airlines Business Class. We start our journey off at O'Hare Terminal 3, where I'm offered the AA Flagship lounge invite. I've been at this terminal a couple times in the past, but never for flying Flagship Business. AA has rather mixed reviews when it comes to its Business product, and I'm really looking forward to putting it to the test.

The lounge was very packed, with lots of passengers aboard BA's flight over to London which was scheduled to take off in a while. The lounge notably quieted down after that. There was a surprisingly large variety of food at the buffet, I just went with some pasta, shrimp, Korean vermicilli salad, sushi, and some vegetables with my sodas and coffee. I also snatched a quick glass of whisky in hopes of a good night's sleep. They really put in extra effort plating the shrimp in this mini pan thing, but it was rather unpleasant.

Exiting the lounge, I came out to take this gorgeous picture of the tarmac, featuring BA and Aer Lingus in addition to AA on its home turf. Accompanied with the clouds and sunset, it really is an aviation enthusiast's heaven. 

With night dawning, I decided to take a stroll around the terminal. Having experienced the likes of Asian and Middle Eastern carriers, it's hard for the liked of AA or other North American airlines to compete in terms of service. However, I have to admit that AA might have the coolest looking planes out there, this military jet-like grey exterior is just stunning.

AA One World Livery

Despite having our scheduled departure time at 22:10, I was surprised to see this big guy parked at our gate only an hour before.

While I can't complain about O'Hare's mighty close-up Terminal windows, I knew AA's infamous lack of on-time departures was about to strike. Aaaaaand, let these pictures explain themselves.
These were actually only two of around six delay texts we received, each pushing the departure time back twenty minutes to half an hour or so. Gave me chance to strike up a nice conversation with another aviation enthusaist!

I was honestly expecting us to spend the night here, but the final text message proved to be it, and we were finally ready to board at around 23:00, an hour past our scheduled departure time.
Here we are, my seat for this trip over to Madrid. 5A was the last seat before the partition, I believe. Waiting on my seat were slippers, bedding, and an amenity kit. The amenity kit was rather basic, eye mask, earplugs, and some socks (if i remember correctly, and maybe a toothbrush too). Credit definitely given to the Bang & Olufsen headphones, among the best out there in any business class. 

I kiceked things off with some water and sparkling wine.

There was space under the IFE screen to store my shoes, and the screen itself was a solid size. I did find it slightly uncomfortable with the massive block to the right of my IFE screen which fits up the seat in front of me, I kept banging my leg against it when trying to walk out to the aisle.

Here was the dinner menu. I had heard great things about AA's signature Ice Cream Sundae, so that was a no-brainer when dessert came around. My apologies in advance for not showing breakfast, I ended up sleeping straight through.

Service quickly began after takeoff, I was offered some nuts and went with a whisky+coke and a ginger ale for my drink.

Dinner came served all in one tray, and honestly this was pretty solid. The salad and starters were rather basic, but the lobster Mac & Cheese accompanied with the sauce really worked well with the braised short rib, well done AA. The only room for improvement was that the 'lobster' Mac & Cheese was very greasy, from this picture looks like it's swimming in oil. I ended up having to dampen my napkins to drench out some of the oil, but the short rib was very tender and after some dampening, so was the pasta:). I use 'lobster' very loosely, I think there might have been two mini pieces of it.

Maybe it was all the alcohol talking, or just the little kid in me, I was ecstatic about dessert. 'it has to be the ice cream doesn't it', was the response I gave to my purser when asked. 
Ice cream sundaes always hit the spot. No more need be said.

There was wifi available for purchase, but I opted out since planned on being asleep for the most part.

My apologies for not getting any shots of the layflat bed, I straight up passed out after dessert. The seat lies flat as any other long-haul business class would, but there's no mattress so the surface was rather rough and quite bumpy. AA does provide a comfortable duvet and nice large pillow, nothing spectacular, however.

When we were nearing descent, something interesting happened. There were 4-5 people lining up for each of the two lavatories near my seat, so I headed over to the front toilet. I was stopped by a flight attendant who informed me that the pilot had booked to use the toilet soon and I needed to head to the back. I hung out to grab some water and asked if I could use it really quickly but again she denied my request. I don't think it's unreasonable for her to deny my request, it was moreso her attitude which bothered me. I strolled to the middle section and waited a good ten minutes before the line cleared up. 

Just curious, is this a normal occurrence? 

We landed in Madrid at 14:14 local time, 49 minutes later than scheduled. We actually made up some good time considering the hour and a half delay. We parked here near an Avianca bird.