Review of American Eagle flight Fargo → Chicago in Domestic First

china 2019 (and D.c. too)

american eagle flight 3078 fargo to chicago o'hare

My father dropped my off at Hector International an hour before departure. The airport was very empty outside. It took less than a minute to check-in, check my suitcase, and print off my boarding passes. There was a priority line and a regular line.

After I said goodbye to my parents I went to clear security. There was no other people besides the two that were in front of me in the Pre check line. At 3:03 I was past security.

Earlier that day Chicago experienced some pretty bad storms. Over 500 flights were canceled from O'Hare. There were two United CRJ-200s parked at the airport that were delayed.

My aircraft was at Gate 1 where it had come from Des Moines earlier as the inbound AA3078 flight had been canceled. N740EV was originally operated by Atlantic Southeast Airlines and then Expressjet for Delta Connection. Skywest took over the plane after Delta terminated their contract with Expressjet.

I waited in the gate area as an agent announced a gate change of Gate 3 to Gate 1. Boarding eventually began at 3:25 and I was the first on the plane.

Skywest has two configurations of the CRJ-700 operating for American Eagle. The ex-Delta jets had 65 seats with three rows of first class. The ex-United jets had 70 seats with two rows of first class.

My seat, 1A, was the single bulkhead seat on the left side. You can tell this plane flew for Delta by the blue armrests. The seats in First and Economy are the old seats but with new finishings.

Shortly after I sat down a flight attendant asked for a pre-departure drink. I chose a Coke Zero. On the left of the seat there is a permanent cup-rest. The tray table also folded out of the left armrest.

The seat had some pretty good recline.

To my surprise I found a universal power outlet and USB port to the left of the seat. Kudos to Delta for having good amenities on their planes.

The legroom of my seat wasn't bad, but it was uncomfortable to stretch out in.

The overhead bins were pretty small, so most people had to gate-check their bags. I only had a backpack with me, so I was able to fit it in.

My seat had two sets of lights and air vents.

View

Boarding ended and the jetbridge was pulled away at 3:56. We pushed back at 4:02 and the flight attendant did the manual safety demonstration. This flight had two female flight attendants.

Unfortunately, after we pushed back things went wrong. The captain announced that we would not be able to take off for 50 minutes as there was a ground-stop in Chicago due to the previous storms. Planes were not allowed to take off or land as all the slots were filled. My flight to DCA was also delayed, so I wouldn't miss my connection. With nothing to do, I went on my phone to play Brawl Stars. In the meantime, a Delta Connection CRJ-700 arrived from MSP.

I decided to check out the one lavatory in the back of the plane. It was an average size and was relatively clean.

These ex-Delta jets also came equipped with some pretty nice blue lighting.

A second announcement was eventually made with us being told that there was no update to the situation at Chicago but they were anticipating us moving 10 minutes later. 

The flight attendants came around with another round of drinks and handed out Biscoffs. I asked for a Ginger Ale.

5:16 update: Another 30 minutes on the ground.
Next update: 5:52 departure time. Almost two hours late. 

Thankfully at 5:43 the engines were started and we started to taxi to Runway 18. Our flight time would be 1 hour and 16 minutes with a cruising altitude of 31,000 feet.

We started our takeoff roll at 5:52.

Our takeoff provided pretty good views of NDSU and Downtown Fargo.

View leaving Fargo.

6 minutes after takeoff we were close to reaching our cruise altitude and the flight attendants made the traditional announcements. Around 10 minutes later the in-flight service started. I asked for a water as my drink.

I felt like the first class flight attendant could have done better as she didn't really smile and held out the snack basket to me without saying anything. There were many options to choose from but I selected some chips and a bag of cookies.

For the rest of the flight I watched some Big Bang Theory episodes using the free streaming service AA offers. The flight went by pretty fast, and we were descending a couple of episodes later.

Does anyone recognize this airport or AFB?

Our flight path had us flying over Lake Michigan and turning back towards Chicago.

Unfortunately the cloud cover was pretty low, but the views of the Chicago skyline were awesome.

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We touched down on Runway 27R at 7:15 CDT.

Pulling into our gate, 7:35, 1 hour and 35 minutes late.