Pre-Flight
My two days in Madison flew by, and it was soon time to go back to reality after visiting family and eating lots of cheese curds. I was prepared to have to take the bus down to O'Hare, but my cousin and her husband were headed to Evanston that day, so I rode with them since their car was definitely more roomy than the Van Galder bus, and I would get some time just with them. It's about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Madison down to Chicago, and they dropped me off at the famous Lou Malnati's deep dish restaurant, and after getting my deep dish fix, I grabbed the Pulse Dempster bus over to O'Hare since the Metra trains were delayed. I was the only passenger for most of the ride, and we pulled into the multi-modal facility around 2:00 and the people mover dropped me off at Terminal 1 about 10 minutes later.
I headed straight to security, and even though there were lots of people ahead of me, I got through in about 20 minutes. It definitely helped that most of the lanes were being used and there weren't any officers just standing around (cough cough PDX), although I had to take my iPad out of my backpack, which wasn't the case at PDX or IAD. Still, not having to take my shoes off anymore was life-changing and really highlights how ridiculous it was that we did that for 20 years. Once I got through, I had just about 40 minutes until boarding so I grabbed a doughnut from Dunkin and just waited at gate B19 as my A319 arrived from ALB. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas as storms came over the airport and brought about a ground stop on the ramp. Fortunately, everything above the wing was going smoothly as boarding began on time, but I noticed a family with a very loud young girl in our gate area and I was praying that they weren't going to be on this flight.
Back here to fly home a week after flying out through here
My A319 had just arrived from ALB
The Flight
We boarded right on time and I headed right back towards 34A, the second-to-last row on the plane, but not before bumping my head once again on the top of the doorway. The struggles of a 6'3" traveler. I settled in once again, but then the family with the girl who was screaming in the terminal boarded, and they sat in 34 and 35D-F…directly across from me. And we would sit on the ground for some time too, as the bags from the previous flight hadn't yet been offloaded and the plane still needed to be catered, all as a result of the ground stop. Luckily though, the middle seat remained empty as boarding completed, and the screaming child seemed to calm down when her parents put on a Ms. Rachel video on their phone for her to watch. "Hoosiers" was my movie of choice for the flight (RIP Gene Hackman) as we pushed back at around 4:20 once all of the ground tasks had been finished. I did get some good spotting in as we taxied across the airport, with lots of international traffic coming and going. Still, we lifted off almost an hour behind schedule thanks to the ground stop, making it 0/2 with on-time departures from ORD on this trip.
This A319 had been updated with the new UA cabin, complete with seatback IFE
LH 748 getting ready to leave for FRA as LH 430–these flights arrive at Terminal 5 (where immigration/customs are located) and get towed over to the other terminals for departure
Look back towards T1
AA 737-800 headed to DFW as AA 2257
EK 77W just arriving from DXB as EK235
WN 737 Max 8 departing for BNA as WN 1130
KL special livery on their 787-10, getting set to head back to base at AMS as KL48
EI and AA
IB and EI, some Oneworld action
Dreamliner in the old UA livery
Once airborne, it would not be so easy to make up time either as the storms that had caused us to be delayed had moved right into our scheduled flight path over Indiana, so we headed north past Kenosha and Milwaukee and made a right turn over Lake Michigan. Our final route ended up being somewhat banana-shaped, over Michigan and even southern Ontario before making the approach into DCA. The FAs started the service soon after takeoff, and this time I went for the snack mix instead of the stroopwafel. Interestingly, the FA handed everyone the basket to for us to pick what we wanted, even all the way in the back, but he seemed to be enforcing just one per person–on DL and even WN I've gotten both options (or double of one), sometimes without asking. Getting the full can of cranberry juice once again made up for that, though. After flying north of Detroit, the skies cleared up and it stayed like that for the rest of the flight.
I believe that’s US-14, and then on the left is I-90
Kenosha, WI is down below
Southern part of Lake Huron over southwest Ontario
Snack mix, cranberry juice and Coach Norman Dale
A bit cloudy after passing London, ON
Southern shore of Ontario over Lake Erie
New York shore of Lake Erie
Harrisburg, PA is off in the distance
Hanover, PA
Thanks to our unorthodox routing with the weather, we took way more of a northerly approach into DCA, and I started to get just a little bit nervous. This was my first flight into DCA since the AA 5342 mid-air collision with the Sikorsky in January, and while I knew that thousands of planes had safely landed there since then, it was hard not to have that in the back of my mind as we got closer. After crossing Lake Erie just north of Erie, we began our initial approach just over State College, but we were very far east of where we probably would have approached from, and I wondered whether we'd be landing from the south when we passed by Baltimore. However, we took a very sharp turn and went parallel to the northern edge of the Beltway, and then turned left over the Potomac and made the typical landing from the north. I was a bit worried we were too far east, but we touched down with a smooth landing and we were on at gate 10 in no time.
Baltimore
University of Maryland, College Park is off to the left
Silver Spring, MD and you can see Georgia Avenue extend down into DC
The famous Mormon Temple, which always is cited on Beltway traffic reports
Georgetown Prep High School, one of the country’s most famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) high schools
Embassy of France, with the National Cathedral off in the distance
East part of Georgetown University’s campus
East Potomac Park, and Audi Field off in the distance right before landing
Our final routing
Interesting that these showed up as connecting flights, considering that UA does not serve either of these cities from DCA
Post-flight
As in all of my other legs, I had to wait quite a bit to get off the plane and the screaming child got uptight again after being pretty good for most of the time we were in the air. Once I got my carry-on from the bin, I quickly made my way off and into the United part of the airport, which is gates 10-14 in the connector between Terminals 1 & 2. DCA is maybe the best airport in the country when it comes to transit connectivity, as I was on the Metro no more than 10 minutes after stepping off the plane. I was very glad my flight got in when it did because soon after I got home, I saw that there was a worldwide UA ground stop in place thanks to a fire alarm at their operations center back in Chicago. Unlike my last plane trip, I got very lucky!
UA’s operations at DCA are crammed into these four gates in this small area
AS getting ready to depart for SFO
Always a welcome sight when coming
