Author: Aaropika

1. Get up and move around: During long-haul flights, most people probably want to stay in their seat and watch movies. However, you should at least get out of your seat many times during your flight to walk along the aisle or perform leg exercises. Doing these things will keep your legs active instead of staying still and will help prevent painful blood clots. It also passes the time.
2. Select your seat wisely: This might’ve happened to you before. You selected a seat on the airline’s website, but when you arrive on the plane, you find out that your seat has a missing window, restricted recline, or bad legroom. You can use the website SeatGuru to find out what your plane is like. All you have to is your airline and plane type on Google and SeatGuru will show up. This can guarantee you’ll get no nasty surprises waiting for you on the plane.
3. Double-check foreign document requirements: Some countries―like Chile, Kenya, and India―require a visa for entry; others, like South Africa, won’t allow entrance unless a traveler’s passport contains at least two blank, unstamped pages. You need to be aware of such requirements before you make your flight reservations or you could get stuck Stateside, according to a source at the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs. For a complete list of entrance regulations, visit travel.state.gov/.

Chicago O’Hare (ORD)

Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW)

New York (JFK)

Denver (DEN)

Los Angeles (LAX)

Atlanta (ATL)

American Eagle operated by Envoy Air Flight 3418 12-24-18

We left our house at 5:47 for our 6:58 flight to Dallas. We arrived at 5:58 at Hector International Airport. It was still dark and quiet outside.

Hector International Curbside

Hector International Outside

Since we had already checked-in online and were only traveling with hand luggage, we proceded to security straight away. The check-in desks were quiet as people for the flights before ours had already checked-in.

Hector International Check-in Desks

Wright Flyer model with Santa

There weren’t many people at security, and we were able to breeze right through with TSA Pre-Check. However, my father was pulled aside for some additional screening :p.

Our plane for today was N243NN, a 2/2 year-old ERJ-175 operated by Envoy Air for American Eagle.

AA ERJ-175

Next to our plane was a Delta 737-900ER heading to Minneapolis/Saint-Paul at nine.

Delta 737

With nothing to do, I decided to stroll about the terminal.

FIDS

United CRJ-200 heading to Chicago-O’Hare

UA CRJ-200

In near terminal near Gate 4 was a café, where many people went to buy breakfast today.

Airport Café

I walked back around to Gate 1 where there was a Delta CRJ-900 ready to depart to Atlanta. In the background was another CRJ-900 headed to MSP, which I thought was odd because the flight was supposed to have departed already at five in the morning.

Delta CRJ-900s

Gate 2 waiting area

Eventually, I headed back to Gate 3 to wait for boarding to begin.

Gate 3 waiting area

Boarding was called at 6:32 starting with people who needed assistance and military members.

On the plane

I found my seat at 4A, and my dad was seated at 3A in front of me. The first class cabin consisted of 12 seats spread across four rows in a 1-2 configuration. My dad and I were seated in the single seats along the left side of the plane. The flight attendant came around and asked for pre-departure drinks. I asked for a ginger ale, and it was served in a plastic cup.

AA ERJ-175 First Class seat (picture taken later in flight)

On the left side was a pull-out cup holder

ERJ-175 cup holder

The tray table folded out of the right armrest and was a good size

ERJ-175 Tray Table

The seatback pocket contained all the reading materials and was pretty large, so you could fit many things in it.

ERJ-175 seatback pocket

Legroom was good with a seat pitch of 37 in.

ERJ-175 legroom

Boarding continued with 8 out of 12 first class seats taken, including two unaccompanied minors. Doors closed at 6:48, and we ended up pushing back seven minutes early at 6:51!

First class cabin

View from my seat

Engines were started up, and the flight attendant did the safety demonstration.

Pushback

We taxied by the CRJ-900 that was supposed to go to MSP, but it was deicing for some reason. We didn’t have to deice. 🙂

Delta CRJ-900 deicing

We taxied to Runway 18 and started our takeoff roll.

The views of downtown Fargo were pretty good, and the lights were beautiful. Unfortunately, the water drops on the windows made it really hard to take decent pictures.

North Dakota St.

Downtown

Outskirts

Reaching cloud level

After we had about leveled off, I took a bathroom break. On the ERJ-175, there was bathroom behind the cockpit and another behind the economy cabin. The bathroom was a bit small, but perfectly usable.

ERJ-175 lavatory

The sun was just rising when I came back.

Sunrise

The flight attendant came back and offered breakfast, I accepted. The breakfast consisted of some cereal and milk, a cinnamon roll, a banana, strawberry yogurt, some grapes, and crackers with cheese. I had a Dr. Pepper to go along with it.

ERJ-175 breakfast

The breakfast was pretty good, and I finished it all. The flight attendant offered me a refill on my drink, but I politely declined.

View after breakfast

Since the ERJ-175 doesn’t feature any seatback entertainment, I took out my phone to stream videos on it with AA’s personal device entertainment. However, when I logged onto the wifi and went to airborne.gogoinflight.com to watch any video, it wouldn’t work. I would tap on a TV show, and the site would bring me to the AA app and an error message would show up. No matter how many attempts I tried, it just wouldn’t work. It’s worked in the past with my old iPhone, so I don’t know why the streaming wasn’t working on my Android. I decided it was a lost cause and looked through the things in the seatback pocket.

ERJ-175 seatback contents

DFW terminal map

AA route network. FAR is nearly directly North of DFW

For the remainder of the flight, I listened to some music, played some games, and looked through the window. We started descending around 40 minutes later.

Starting our descent

Winglet shot

Breaking through the clouds

Getting closer

Closer

Almost there…

We landed on Runway 13R

Thrust reversers engaged

Atlas Air 747-400F

Terminal D in the distance

Emirates A6-EPZ from Dubai-DXB

AA CRJ-900 Terminal B

We arrived at Terminal B at 9:26, parked next to another ERJ-175.

ERJ-175 Terminal B

We bid the flight attendant farewell and headed to the Skylink to Terminal D

Our plane

Summary:

This was a pretty good flight, overall. The flight attendant was nice and provided good service, the seats were comfortable, and the food was good as well. Unfortunately, since the device streaming didn’t work I couldn’t really do anything during the flight. Interestingly, the seatbelt sign never came off even though it was one of the smoothest flights I’ve ever been on. Departing from FAR was smooth as always, and the taxi time at DFW was a bit long, though. Stay tuned for the upcoming review on the Amex Centurion and the AA ERJ-140.

My name is Aaron Qiu, and I am a freshman at Davies High School in Fargo, North Dakota. As a child, I have had some chances to travel to many places in the United States and China. I created this site to share my latest experiences with other people and to give them tips & tricks about traveling on airplanes, trains and going through the airport. I’ll also have information regarding high-speed trains in China and other information about travel-related things. My goal is to help people out, so their next trip is not as stressful. Have fun and explore the site!