After a lesuirely morning of exploring the White House Visitors Centre, breakfast at the hotel and slowly packing up in the hotel, we checked out and headed for the Metro station.
We decided to take the metro to our airport today because the station was close to the hotel, we still had a few dollars on our metro cards and the metro goes directly to the airport from the stop near our hotel. No changes, no hassles.
The metro station was only a couple of blocks away and there was a train within minutes of getting to the station. 20 minutes later we were pulling into the DCA metro station ready for a long walk from the station to the American Airlines check in, along with security.
AA’s check in was way at the opposite end of the terminal from where the metro drops off, but because we were at the wrong end of the metro train we had to walk about half the platform and then back the other way. We eventually found the AA check in desk so I could drop my bag off (already paid online) and after self printing a bag tag you then take it to an AA staff member who taps a few keys and tells you to take it to a different part of the airport. Lots of screwing about!
We made it to the Clear checkpoint and headed through and then it was a short walk to the gate where we had about 45 minutes to boarding. We just hung around the gate area reading and chilling out.
American Airlines – AA620
Washington DC National to Charlotte
1355-1535
Boeing 737-800 (N946NN)
Economy Class – Seat 32F
Boarding: 1320 (Gate D45)
Push Back: 1356
Take Off Roll: 1408 (Runway 19)
Top of Descent: 1443
Touch Down: 1502 (Runway 36R)
Shut Down: 1515 (Gate B8)
Soon enough boarding began for our flight and the gate scrum started. There was people standing everywhere and I waited a whole before trying to get in line, but it was still a bit of a fight. Once onto the jet bridge it was a slow slow process getting onto the aircraft. Eventually I did get onboard for more slow process getting to my seat and getting my bag sorted.
Once in my seat I just chilled and waited we closed up 100% full and we waited a bit before we could push back. There was a lot of traffic headed out around the same time. We made our way to the active and after what seemed like a very short penalty box wait, we took our turn and headed into the sky.
It was a bumpy climb out, not sure why, big it stopped after a few minutes, as we climbed out the crew were up quickly to provide a basic service. They were quick and looked like they were hurrying quite a bit. We got a pack of pretzels da drink and soon enough we were top of descent into Charlotte. Service was still being worked on even into turning finals which was a crazy thing. We came in over the city Charlotte which seemed to come out of no where.
Once on the ground we waited a bit of our gate to open up and then we waited for what felt like every single person to get off the plane ahead of us. Once we were allowed to leave it was through the maze of bags headed to baggage claim and the rental desks. We were renting with SIXT for the first time so it was going to be an adventure.