Review of American Airlines flight Charlotte → Washington in Economy

boarding

I was connecting in off of a flight from Greenville, NC, so I can't comment on the check in and security process at CLT.

I arrived at gate B15 about 5 minutes before boarding. I frequented through CLT airport quite a bit in the past, and I honestly hate the way that the airport is laid out. The pier concept means that you have long walks to the gates, and the tight gate areas at the ends of the piers means that there is a lot of crowding in the gate areas just due to a lack of space. 

Boarding began right on schedule at 8:09 pm out of gate B15.

I was able to grab a quick picture of the A319 that would be taking us up to DCA today as we were boarding.

The seat

I quickly found my seat, 10D, an aisle seat in the third row of main cabin extra. The seat features 34 inches of pitch, 17.7 inches of width, and some recline.

In front of you is the seatback with the safety card in the seatback pocket and the tray table. In between each seat is a standard US power outlet, for two outlets per sets of three seats. So they’re first come, first serve. Though, my middle seatmate only needed a USB A charger and I had a USB C charger with a power adapter with one USB C and one USB A port, so I was happy to share!

the flight

At 8:28, boarding was completed.

At 8:34, the safety demonstration began.

At 8:37, the captain came on to let us know that our flight time would be one hour and one minute from takeoff to touchdown tonight.

We pushed back right on schedule at 8:39 pm

At 8:43, our pushback was complete and we began our taxi to the runway.

We had a long wait for our departure, and waited in line for about 20 minutes before we took off.

At 9:02, we took runway 18L for departure.

At 9:06, we reached 10,000 feet and were on our way to Washington DC.

At 9:15, we reached our cruising altitude of 27,000 feet.

At 9:19, the inflight service started. On American, you can get an alcoholic beverage for free if seated in Main Cabin Extra. I went with Dos Equis tonight, which was served with a Biscoff cookie.

arrival

At 9:35, we began our descent into Washington, DC.

At 10:02, we touched down on Runway 1 at DCA.

We then arrived at our gate, C31, at 10:08 pm, about 8 minutes behind schedule.

I usually don't comment on the baggage claim part of my flights, but something I found interesting was that, because my connection was so tight, I think they loaded my bags last on the aircraft. And, for the first time, my bags were the first ones off of the plane and out on the carousel at DCA! Anyways, it was just kind of neat. And that meant that I was on the metro and on my way home soon after getting to the carousel!