Tuesday 9th September 2014
After taking the employee shuttle from the HQ building through the back parking lots of the facilities and around the outside perimeter of the airport, we arrived over at the new Love Field terminal. Dallas’s closer airport to downtown is Love Field and it was old. But with the massive upcoming changes to the Wright Amendment coming up in October the whole airport was upgraded. The terminal feels fresh and new and not at all outdated.
As I headed over towards the ticket counters I grabbed a few snaps of the new branding that was installed on Sunday night while no one was around. The entire airport was redone so that there was at least one terminal done. Check in took a while as only one counter was open for those of us who couldn’t use the self tagging kiosks (wish I could as I was travelling on an old school paper ticket). The paper ticket issue was resolved swiftly and quickly when I got a chance and I was shortly headed off to security. Having to sit in normal security lines for once was a bit of a change as normally I could use a premium lane with a card from another airline or something like that. Not here in Dallas, since the only airline in the terminal at the moment is southwest, and I dont’t have southwest status.. that aint gonna happen. But the TSA stuff at Love Field were great, friendly across the board and that surprised me. There was even one staff member walking through the lines wishing everyone a good day, at least you know some TSA employees can be nice.
As I cleared security I had just walked past a gate Flight Information Display Screen and low and behold…. delay. This was not good. My flights today would take me from Dallas to San Diego with a brief stop in Albuquerque where I would not get off the aircraft. After a 39 minute connection in San Diego I was to fly home to Seattle. My flights were now screwed essentially. I headed off to find the customer service desk near my gate (Southwest generally have a counter that serves multiple gates at once). After speaking with a gate agent who informed me I would not have a problem and that my flight will connect as they would hold the plane for me, I was skeptical, very very skeptical. I headed off into the terminal and since I was still on my work “Vacation time” and off the clock for the blog for the trip home… I took it upon myself to enjoy a donut, A Dunkin Donut no less! Since not having the chance to see a Dunkin since I was in New York last year and not getting the chance to have one then, I figured I might as well. I felt like a treat as my entire day could possibly turn to shit.
I also took a brief walk around the terminal, scoping things out and checking out all the goodies. The place was pretty amazing, fresh, modern, plenty of places to sit (since Southwest doesn’t have a lounge) and socialize. Plenty of food outlets especially local options like BBQ or Whataburger (which I am not quite sure how good that is, but apparently the amount of people who had some would have to mean something right?). I headed over to the gate area, found a spot and sat down to wait, tweet, and enjoy my pumpkin pie donut. After a while of tweeting and worrying a plane pulled up to our gate. At least I know I would be getting out of there. However luck was holding out as there had been an equipment swap to a 700 series which meant WIFI!
Southwest Airlines – WN802
Dallas Love Field to Albuquerque
1610-1650
Boeing 737-700 (N752SW)
Economy – Seat 16F (Seq B36)
Boarding: 1630 (Gate 6)
Push Back: 1700
Take Off Roll: 1707 (Runway 13L)
Top of Descent: 1705
Touch Down: 1731 (Runway 26)
Shut Down: 1735 (Gate A7)
While waiting for the passengers to deboard, I moved myself over closer to the windows where the side I needed to be on when my group was called to line up and took some photos of the plane, wrote a couple of notes, sent a few texts home. Everyone was lined up quickly ready to go. They all knew they had to get onboard quickly to make up some of the time. The best part was watching people organise themselves into the right order. No one was fighting, everyone just got in line like they should. There is something to the way Southwest’s boarding system works and although some people may not like it, you have to give them props for it.
My turn was called and I lined up and once let onboard I headed on down to the plane. Seeing the WiFi logo by the door was great as it meant that an $8 investment could give me a good afternoon of WiFi and productiveness onboard. It would also mean that i could stay connected while the flight was going so i could keep abreast of the situation at hand. I could research gate positions, maps of the terminals, times anything needed to get me between planes quickly.
I found a window seat towards the back but first I had to ask someone to step out of the aisle first. He was taking the aisle seat in the hopes that he could get a full row. Nice try buddy. As I settled in and the plane filled up. Someone asked if he would mind moving to the middle at all so he could sit down (this guy was not small but not overly large but obviously could do with some space into the aisle) and the guy on the end of the row rudely said “I ain’t sitting in the middle for no one, go somewhere else”. Not the best way to start a flight. It did mean in the end that the middle seat stayed open next to me for the first leg through to ABQ.
We pushed back and headed for the runway which was as far away from the southwest headquarters as we could possibly go. I was hoping to get one last photo but sadly that was not to be the case. We took off very quickly without much of a hold and I was pleasantly surprised by that. The climb out was pretty standard with a good right turn over downtown Dallas so I got to see everything I saw on the way in but from a different angle.
As we climbed out and passed 10,000ft my laptop came out and so did my wallet to process the $8 fee and that bought me WiFi for the next several hours. It wasn’t just $8 per session but $8 per day on a single device. So although I was now only stuck using it on my laptop I was still ok with that. As we climbed out I kind of tuned out to the flight and didn’t even put any music in or anything while we were flying. The first couple of flights were about 90 minutes each so I was more interested in getting work done than doing anything else. When the beverage service came around I tried out what I had found out on the way into Dallas. If you ask for a “Can of Water” you literally get a can filled with water. I had not seen that before the flight and wasn’t sure if it would work. I gave it a shot and it worked! I had a whole can to myself.
I worked away and then as we dipped towards New Mexico and the ABQ Sunport i put away the laptop and out came the camera. I was enjoying it as we came in closer and closer. I had no idea where I was at all but the surroundings were great. I had not been in ABQ since I had passed through quite a long time ago. As we approached ABQ on finals I noticed a couple of C130 hulks sitting in some grassy area so figured that there must have been a national guard base around. Wrong!! As we landed I passed about a dozen more Hercs then about a good 30 or so Blackhawks. Then I saw it, a building that said “Kirtland Air Force Base” and sitting in front of that was an Osprey. It could only mean one thing was stationed there Air Force Spec Ops but really because of the Helicopters it was the rescue squadrons that were present.
As we taxiied to the gate I flicked my phone back out of Airplane mode in the hopes of getting an update on the flight connection and giving one to home as well. The time was spent trying to get a connection and waiting for everyone to get off the flight.
Southwest Airlines – WN802
Albuquerque to San Diego
1730-1820
Boeing 737-700 (N752SW)
Economy – Seat 6A
Boarding: 1742 (Gate A7)
Push Back: 1759
Take Off Roll: 1807 (Runway 21)
Top of Descent: 1805
Touch Down: 1836 (Runway 27)
Shut Down: 1838 (Gate A7)
Once everyone was off that was meant to get off, they counted the people up and gave the go ahead to move about the cabin. I quickly got up and grabbed my bag heading for the front to try and snag a window seat as close to the door as possible. I wanted to make sure that when I got to San Diego I could get through as quickly as possible. I got the gate updates come through on my phone through Tripit (thanks for the flight delay information guys… ) and then heard someone say “We will have to go through security again… I panicked. Please don’t do this to me!
We had a fairly quick turn in Albuquerque and as we pushed back and taxiied out I got a good couple of shots of a Delta 757 landing and taxiing up right next to us. We headed over to a different runway from the one we used on arrival and that had me puzzling. Then we stopped and waited. This was weird because I heard the double chime for the flight attendants telling them to take a seat, and there was no one else ahead of us on the taxiway and I couldn’t see anyone at all. What the hell were we waiting for. Turns out a tiny small cessna was landing on a small cross runway so when he passed us the pilots gave the plane the boot and off we went!
As we climbed out I looked down and saw a familiar looking river. One that I had floated over a number of years ago in a hot air balloon. That made me think back to some good times on my first real overseas adventure on my own. Memories! We shortly passed 10,000ft and i went back to work on the laptop. As I worked away the service came around and I got a can of water again. Deciding to focus more on working out this connection. It was true what I had heard, we were going to have to reclear security and I was frantically trying to work out what to do. Without really realising just how long we were in the air, the plane made it’s top of descent dip and next thing I know we get the initial descent greeting by the pilots.
As we headed into San Diego I was looking around for familiar landmarks. I had only ever flown into San Diego once before and was not sure what I would see from this direction. I think I saw MCAS Miramar off in the distance, but I wasn’t sure but then as we started to turn and descend further the Navy Facilities came into view. Seeing the Amphibs come in to view then the big white ship standing out put things down for sure. We were coming in over the city on the 27 approach and that white ship (which is the US Navy’s Hospital Ship USNS Mercy) meant that the Naval Station San Diego was in sight and that we would be on the ground in minutes.
As we came in to San Diego I could see plenty of Southwest Aircraft on the ground and numerous lined up for take off. For me it meant that I didn’t have long as the taxi times at Southwest for landing can be quite short. We were not on the taxi way long at all after landing and in the gate moments are pulling off the runway and as we pulled in I noticed that there was a special over near the gate area we were going to. I couldn’t see a gate number at that point but I was fairly certain that it was on our gate. Which special? Nevada One painted to pay tribute to the State of Nevada.
Once they pulled into the gate there was a mad scramble for bags and then they made a blessing of an announcement. “Would all the passengers travelling to Seattle, please make themselves known to the two staff waiting at the end of the Air bridge. You will be escorted to your gate so that you do not need to reclear security”. That sentence was probably one of the best I had heard all night. I made it off the plane quickly and identified myself and then we had to wait a few minutes to collect a few more people (as they wanted to move us in two groups).
When we left the gate area heading towards the exits right before heading out of the secure area they moved us left towards an exit door and that meant one thing. A Tarmac walk. They told us “No cameras” to which I promptly ignored and off we went outside across the tarmac from one secure area to another. It was then that I saw that Nevada One was most certainly sitting on our gate. As we walked into the secure area again I saw a whole heap of people sitting around and thinking they hadn’t boarded yet that was good, then I saw they were gate 2 not 1 and had to quickly run off towards our gate.
Southwest Airlines – WN238
San Diego to Seattle Tacoma
1905-2155
Boeing 737-700 (N727SW – Nevada One)
Economy Seat – 4A
Boarding: 1855 (Gate A1)
Push Back: 1907
Take Off Roll: 1910 (Runway 27)
Top of Descent: 2120
Touch Down: 2145 (Runway 16R)
Shut Down: 2150 (Gate B6)
I made it to gate 1 and there was still people standing there. Not quite sure what was going on I asked the first person I saw if they had boarded the Seattle flight to which the gentleman said that since there was only 50 people on the flight they were going to wait for a bit to since they couldn’t depart early. THANK GOD!! I had made my flight and when I looked at my watch it meant we may not be delayed all that much. This made me a very very happy man.
I had a chance to take a deep breath and take my space in line. I headed over to the boarding lanes and got myself in the right spot. Asking someone who was standing there already what his number was so that I could work out if i was in front or behind of him and he said that he didn’t care he would board whenever he wanted. That is so not how things are done buddy and I would have been extremely unhappy if I had the ability to care right that moment. But I didn’t so I just waited to board. When it was time to get on I was giddy, I had never flown a special livery before.
Boarding Nevada One was like any other flight, except the plane was just painted differently. We boarded very quickly and since the load was so we could have all had rows to ourselves. As it was I had a row of 3 in row 4 to myself and I was a happy chappy. Quick chat to the young lady in the row in front of me and demonstrating my muscles as I helped her with her carry on. When we pushed back I checked my watch to enter the data in my log book and it turns out we were departing ON TIME! I had gone from 50 minutes late departing Dallas to making up all that lost time in San Diego. Sure I didn’t get a chance to grab any food so since having that donut in Dallas all i had was a cookie i had stashed in my bag and forgotten about and that was all I was going to get till I got home.
We headed for a taxi to the end of the runway and the sun was setting fast. The light was getting amazing but it was making it tough for the camera to focus and that meant I missed a fantastic avgeek shot of a 737 making a right turn in sunset. A brilliant composition missed by seconds. When it was our turn to hit the sky, we leapt off the pavement and made a right turn out over North Island Naval Air Station and out over the coastline. The sun kept fading and the photos were just being snapped continuously. Once clear of 10,000ft I pulled the laptop out for the final time and got to work.
This sector was going to be boring. I was going to work, and just work. The drink service got me a full can of Diet Dr Pepper (as shock as water in a can was to me, Diet Dr Pepper onboard a flight had me flawed) and some wifi and a small pack of peanuts had me going to a happy place. We cruised up the coast and I flicked between my work and twitter most of the way and just relaxed, something I had not fully done since leaving Dallas. It was a good feeling. We passed the coastal parts of Southern California at first, then flew straight north as we flicked over the inland of Northern California. At one point I saw Reno off our right side on the map.
We started descent roughly over Portland and I slowly packed up my stuff, not before informing my ride that she should head towards the airport to pick me up, sure was going to be happy to be home for once and not have to spend another hour in the truck getting home. I was coming home to someone that was as happy to see me as I was to see her. We got our descent briefing from the cockpit and he said we would be down on the ground in ten minutes and had to take a northerly pattern to come in towards the south. I just laughed inside at that, no way we were landing in 10 minutes, we were no where near seattle at that point, 20 minutes at least. As we descended towards the city I was struggling to keep my eyes open at this point.
Right turn over Freemont & Ballard and tracking for a 16R arrival all while not being able to get a great shot of the Space Needle due to being in the dark. We landed right as another 737 was taking off (not that i could tell who from in the dark, but probably Alaska and we started taxiing over towards the terminals. We had to hold at 16C for another aircraft taxiing infront of us and then at 16L for a departure. We taxiied quickly around to the B gates and pulled up pretty much right where I had left a couple of days earlier.
Through the terminal, down to get my bags and my bag spat out around #5 in the queue. I was extremely happy to find out that it had made it as it was full of all the airline swag I had managed to gather. Heading up to the departures level to be picked up (always a smarter idea at night when there is barely anyone using it) and it was off home. From touch down to home in 20 minutes…. can’t beat that!
