We arrived at the airport at around 5:40 AM for our flight to Dallas. All was quiet and the sun was rising through the grey clouds.
At check-in, there was a line at the American desks. All the other flights had checked in already. Our flight was scheduled the last to leave from the early-morning rush of six flights.
Frontier and United counters. I know Sun Country operates charter flights to Fargo, but I don’t know why their banner was here.
American and Allegiant counters. Delta was to the left of us.
The line moved pretty fast and soon enough, we were at the TSA-Pre Check line. Unfortunately, Pre-Check wasn’t operating today, so we had to use the regular line.
Post-security
We were airside after 6:00. Our plane was parked at gate 3. It arrived the night before from Dallas. Another American flight departed to Chicago, also from Gate 3 at 5:53.
Our flight to Dallas, N252NN, a 1.7 year-old ERJ-175LR.
Delta 737-900ER to Minneapolis.
In the distance, the morning FedEx flight from Memphis was taxiing in.
This United CRJ-200 going to Chicago was delayed. Its comrade already departed for Denver earlier in the morning.
Gate 3 at 6:29 AM. Boarding started to commence for the first groups.
Delta pushed back six minutes later. 2nd flight of the day for Delta.
I found my seat at 6:45, legroom was decent for economy. American has first class, main cabin-extra, and main cabin on these Envoy ERJ jets.
View from our seats.
I decided to look at the AA fleet section of the in-flight magazine in the seat pocket. AA has the largest fleet out of any airline in the world.
Pushback
We ended up pushing back one minute early at 6:57. The captain introduced himself and announced our flight time of two hours and thirteen minutes. There were storm clouds over Sioux Falls, South Dakota, so we would have to veer around that. Other than that, it would be a smooth flight. 🙂
FedEx ramp. FedEx moved their cargo operations from Grand Forks to Fargo in 2016.
FedEx A300
We taxied to Runway 18 and started our takeoff roll at 7:07.
Airbourne!
North Dakota State University
We broke the first layer of clouds at 7:17 only to be trapped in between another, lol.
Cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. During the flight, I watched some TV Shows on AA’s personal device streaming service offered on its regional jets. These planes also don’t have power outlets in economy, but they do in first.
We received drinks and a snack at 7:58. I asked for a Coke Zero and was surprised when I was given the entire can. 🙂 They also gave us some cookies.
Descent
We started our descent into DFW a little bit before 9:00.
We touched down a bit hard on Runway 13R at 9:12.
We started our long taxi to our gate, and we passed by a majestic Cathay Pacific Cargo 747-8F.
We held at Runway 18L/36R waiting for some planes to pass by.
We passed by Terminal D where I tried to catch a glimpse of our 787-9 taking us to Shanghai. No such luck. 😦
We eventually arrived a point between Terminals B and D where we then waited for ten minutes. There was a gate switch that ended up being very confusing to follow.
I did see an American Eagle ERJ in the old livery, however!
We pulled into our gate, exactly on time at 9:40 after a perfectly fine flight on American Eagle.
This was a perfectly fine way to start off our trip. The cabin was clean, the seats were pretty comfortable and had decent legroom, there was good entertainment, the snacks were the same as you would get on any other US airline, and the crew, while not exceptional, did a pretty good job. The waiting at DFW was not fun and ended up giving us a flight time one minute longer than the block time.
Aaron's Travel Network 