As it was time to head back to Canada, I opted for a little excursion. Instead of flying direct from NYC, I booked NYC-YTO via DC. United's fare was actually cheapest at the time at $140USD 2 days before travel.
Today's flight was operated from EWR on a mainline A320 and continued on a Mesa CRJ700.
I arrived at the airport about 90 minutes prior to departure. TSA wait times were around 30 minutes.
The terminal was beginning to get busy as time neared our departure.
I managed to catch both of the newly painted special liveries on United's 757s. This one was headed to SFO.
Catering loading up the UA heavies
LHR bound UA934
UA's domestic fleet in the morning sun
Shanghai bound UA86
Our original A320 which was supposed to operate the IAD flight was swapped to RSW. As a result our gate and aircraft changed.
As I got to the second gate, the gate was changed again, this time to gate 103, and our aircraft, inbound from BNA, hadn't reached EWR as yet
In or around 30 minutes our plane had arrived and boarding began
Pushback eventually came and the lineup for takeoff was pretty long
Soon enough we were on our way to IAD. Downtown Newark was in clear view on departure
EWR from the air
Nearing cruise, the beverage service began on our now 50 minute flight down to the nation's capital
The choices of snacks were between Biscott biscuits, CheeseIts and this Caramel waffle. Sufficient for the short flight
A clear as day descent came momentarily. It was a turbulent one, however
As we were vectored for final, we approached IAD, parallel to a UA 739 from RDU
Touching down safely, we made it to IAD eventually
As our inbound flight was late, the crew made it clear to all IAD terminating passengers to remain in their seats in efforts to allow connecting passengers to make their then tight connections. Before we made it off the runway, passengers were standing, opening overhead bins and were ready to make their olympic marathon runs to their next flights.
As you can see, that didn't help much. Most passengers claimed they were all connecting. We all made it off soon enough though.
N480UA our A320, preparing for the return flight back up to EWR.
Our flight route sourced from Flightradar24.
Thanks for sharing JAZ350!
Gotta love that padding of flight times...except when you get in too early and end up wasting all the extra early arrival time sitting waiting for a gate to open.
Lucky indeed! It seems whenever I have a tight connection like that, I have to run to the complete opposite side of the terminal or airport. And then when I have hours, it's the gate next door...or even the same gate. That was the case yesterday for me. Had 3 hours to kill...gate next door. haha
Seems fair, I've heard that a lot lately. Better than a few years ago it seems as the 1st few post-merger years were a mess, but getting better.
Thanks for sharing!