Review of United flight Calgary → Denver in Economy

Hello and welcome to another series of flight reports! This series will cover a trip I took this summer to Banff and Jasper National Parks in Alberta.

Washington, DC to Seattle, WA (IAD - SEA) | Alaska | 737-900ER [REPORT HERE]
Seattle, WA to Calgary, AB (SEA - YYC) | Horizon | E175
Seattle, WA to Edmonton, AB (SEA - YEG) | Horizon | Q400 [REPORT HERE]
Calgary, AB to Denver, CO (YYC - DEN) | United | A320 [THIS REPORT]
Denver, CO to Washington, DC (DEN - IAD) | United | 737-900ER [REPORT HERE]

Banff and Jasper

Below are a few pictures from Banff and Jasper National Parks. Enjoy!

Calgary Airport

The night prior to the flight I stayed at the Comfort Inn and Suites, Calgary Airport North, a short distance away from the airport terminal entrance. However, despite being branded as an 'airport hotel', the airport shuttle service was pretty inadequate. In the early morning hours, the shuttle only ran every 30 minutes, and both the 04:00 and 04:30 shuttles already had a full complement of people (yes, you had to pre-register for a shuttle seat). Since this flight had a scheduled departure of 06:00, and Calgary has US Preclearance, a 05:00 shuttle would have been cutting it too close – I begrudgingly put my name down for a 03:30 shuttle over to the airport.

After a very short sleep, I woke to my 03:00 alarm and was down in the lobby right at 03:30. A short ride later I was dropped in front of the new International Terminal at YYC.



Since it was still well before 04:00, neither check in nor the security checkpoint were open. However, Tim Horton's was open, so I got some breakfast there while waiting for 04:00 to roll around.

After finishing breakfast, I got my day's two boarding passes from a United Kiosk, then joined the security / preclearance line for US departures. The line was not that long when I joined it, but quickly grew. For US departures, the x-ray machines used the newer "five parallel stations" for both before and after the machines. Not sure what the correct name is for that style of security check, but I definitely noticed that it felt much more relaxed than the more typical serial line. After clearing security, preclearance was quick and painless.

After leaving the preclearance area, you're directed up a set of escalators, straight into a massive Duty-Free shop, laid out to be as confusing as possible (seriously, sleep-deprived me took several wrong turns before figuring out where the entrance to the terminal was).



The new terminal is one of the first (the first…?) in North America that features a "call-to-gate" design. It's pretty common elsewhere in the world, but the idea is that passengers wait in a central area, either at a restaurant or shop, then just before boarding, the gate assignment for their flight is posted on the FIDS, and passengers walk straight into the boarding process.

However, on this early Monday morning, the only shop/restaurant that was open was a Starbucks. So, like most other passengers that morning, I just went and grabbed one of the few seats near the gate.



Very limited gate area seating (by design).



A bit of spotting before boarding. A Skywest-liveried CRJ-700 (didn't know their house livery was on anything other than CRJ-200s) operating a Delta flight to SLC.



A United 737-800 operating to IAH that morning, along with the Walt Disney World WestJet 737-800 and some threatening skies to the south.



Just like every other United mainline flight in recent memory, before boarding the gate agents asked for volunteers to check their larger carry-on bags through to their final destination. I volunteered my bag, because I was in a late-boarding zone and didn't want to worry about it later in the day.

Walking down the boarding pier.

On board

In seat 30A. Besides that Skywest CRJ-700 operating to SLC, there was a DL A320 to MSP, AA E175 for DFW, and a United A319 operating to ORD – the other side of the terminal had a new Delta E175 operating to SEA. Notably absent was the morning Alaska-branded Horizon flight to Seattle – the late-night inbound had cancelled yet again due to the pilot shortage.



The slim-line seat was fairly comfortable, and my knees still had (just a bit of) breathing room in front of them. Fairly standard US domestic space these days.



The sun started peeking through the cloud layer just before push back.



We left the gate right at scheduled departure time, then began our taxi over to the new runway, 35R.



A Canadian North 737-300 holding short a few taxiways up.



Another Canadian North 737-300 landing.

Takeoff

Rotating past the International Terminal.



Turning south and climbing through the cloud layer.

In Flight

I then connected to the in-flight Wi-Fi to use the streaming entertainment. Interestingly, this United system plays an advertisement before showing the content selection. I wasn't too bothered by that.



The actual content selection was quite good – I forget what I selected though. The crew then came by for the in-flight service. I got a coffee and a cracker / cookie thing that was quite good.



Between the solid entertainment content and the good coffee, the cruise passed very quickly – before I knew it, we had started descent into Denver.

Arrival

Seated on the left side of the plane I had a great view of the expansive Denver Airport – the only airport larger in terms of land area is DMM in Saudia Arabia.



Turning back to the north over Buckley AFB.



Our shadow visible below.



Significant amount of spoilers deployed, only 3.5 miles from runway. Must've needed to bleed off some airspeed quickly.



Landing flaps down over the airport access road.



Crossing runway 25. Note the aircraft departing below.



The takeoff queue for runway 34L – the longest commercial runway in North America at 16,000 ft (4.9 km).



Short final for runway 34R, with a United Express CRJ-200 departing on the parallel.



Starting the taxi over to Concourse B after a relatively smooth landing on 34R.



We arrived at gate B17 a few minutes before scheduled arrival time – and, since we precleared US Customs and Immigration in Calgary, we were able to walk right into the terminal like any standard domestic flight.