Review of American Airlines flight Greenville → Charlotte in Economy

check in/security/and pgv terminal

The Pitt-Greenville Airport is small. The terminal features 2 gates. American Eagle is the only airline to fly into or out of this airport. There is one ticket counter for American, which actually features a priority lane for those with priority access.

Once checked in, you can head upstairs to where the TSA checkpoint and gate area is. PGV's terminal is actually kind of nice! It's modern and has a small town feel, which is really nice.

Then you head through TSA. There’s only one line. But, if you have precheck they will have you go through the regular scanner (not full body), and keep your shoes and belt on.

It was super quick. It took me no more than 2 minutes, and that was with the officer who did the ID check stopping to help everyone put their things in the bins before checking the next person’s ID. It was very efficient and friendly!

As soon as you get through the security checkpoint, you enter he gate area. Which look like a mini-admirals club with comfy looking armchairs and sofas and rocking chairs along the window. However, there is no food or drink options after security. There are some vending machines, but that's about it.

boarding

While waiting for boarding to begin, I saw our ERJ-145 land and pull into the gate.

Boarding began right on time at 5:32 pm. They called Concierge Key, and groups 1-4 all at the same time. Being in group 2, I was probably the third person on board.

cabin and seat

These E-145s that are operated by Piedmont are in a word- old. This 22 year-old ERJ-145 is really showing its age with this cabin. They really need to refresh this cabin a bit.

The cabin is arranged in a 1-2 configuration with the “A” seats being on the left side of the cabin, offering both a window and aisle. 

I quickly found my seat 13A, a single aisle seat towards the middle of the aircraft.

 The legroom is tight. And the seats are small at 17 inches wide and 31 inches of pitch. So, there’s not a whole lot of room under the seat in front of you for your personal belongings. Backpacks and other personal items can be placed in the tiny overhead bins over seats B and C. It should be noted that all of the seats on the ERJ-145 are nearly identical in terms of comfort. Maybe the exit rows have more legroom, but I wouldn’t work too hard to find your perfect seat on this aircraft.

The seat features one window, and has a decent view of the wing. 

flight

At 5:47, the captain came on to welcome us onboard, letting us know our flight time of 37 minutes and cruising altitude of 22,000 feet.

At 5:52, boarding was completed.

At 5:55, then engines started up. Yes, you read that right. We did not push back. They started the engines and just turned right away from the gate area. You can see in this next picture, us turning away from the gate area.

After we taxied away from the ramp area, we kinda just sat on the taxiway for about 10 minutes. Not really sure why. The flight deck came and told us that we would be sitting on the ground until 6:40 pm, which was 35 minutes from then. This was due to them controlling air traffic control flow into Charlotte. We should still arrive right on time though.

At exactly 6:40, we started taxiing again and the captain came on to say that we were cleared to go and we’d be on our way.

At 6:42, we took runway 20 for departure.

At 6:48, we reached 10,000 feet and were told that if we needed anything to ring the call bell and the flight attendant would be happy to serve us. I didn’t need anything throughout the flight so I left that alone.

At 7:03, I felt the aircraft start to descend towards Charlotte.

We touched down on runway 18L at 7:30 pm, and taxied to the gate.

We then had to hold short just of our gate because our gate, E2 was a gate that required us to be tugged in.

We then parked at our gate E2 at 7:43 pm, about 6 minutes behind our originally scheduled departure time of 7:37 pm.