Thursday, July 9, 2004 Left Monterey by car a few minutes after 1600 heading for the San Jose Airport. The airfare to fly out of Monterey down to San Diego was at least twice as much as from San Jose, and any time savings would have been eaten up by the required change of planes at Los Angeles. When I booked the tickets, i wasn't sure when exactly I would be able to leave Monterey, or how long it would take me to get there, considering traffic. As it happened, I only had a few minutes of heavy traffic on Highway 1 in Monterey and Salinas, and from there on up it moved quite nicely. I parked my car and arrived in the terminal at about 1730. I had booked myself originally on American Eagle flight 3225 leaving at 2055. I went to an agent to check in and ask about getting on an earlier flight. She didn't give me any indication about my chances of getting on, but put me on the standby list for the 1820 flight, and said if I didn't make it on, to ask the agent at the gate to roll me over to the 1945 flight. After checking in, I headed to security. The line was a bit long, but I'd seen much worse. It moved pretty quickly, and I went through without any hassles, and headed down to gate A16, since boarding for the 1620 flight would be beginning soon. I didn't have to wait long, unfortunately, the 44-seat jet filled before they got to my name on the standby list. I verified with the agent that my name was rolled over to the standby list for the 1945 flight, and then went off in search of food. California Pizza Kitchen looked like my best bet, but I wasn't sure how long it would take to get a pizza and I didn't want to spend too long away from the gate, so I grabbed one of the already made Oriental Chicken Salads. I didn't like it very much, too much cilantro. But it took care of my appetite, and when I was done I headed back to gate A16. I had originally picked American Eagle over Southwest (the only two airlines that fly nonstop between San Jose and San Diego) because American Eagle still had seats available on the evening flights at the lowest fare; to get the same fare on Southwest I would have had to take flight times that wouldn't work out as well. While I was waiting, I realized a second advantage of American Eagle over Southwest: American allows free standby travel on earlier or later flights the same day, while Southwest often requires passengers who have a discounted ticket to pay for the difference to a unrestricted ticket for that segment in order to travel standby. The jungle jet arrived from San Diego, and after a quick turnaround boarding started. After the confirmed passengers were boarded, the agent started working the standby list, and after calling a few other passengers, she called my name. I went up to meet her, and exchange my boarding pass for one on the earlier flight. American Eagle flight 3144 San Jose, California (SJC) to San Diego, California (SAN) Scheduled: 1945-2104 Actual: 1941-2106 Embraer ERJ-140 N822AE Seat 1A My seat was right up front, with the galley to my right. There was a wall in front of me, and the overheads started several rows back. The flight attendant offered to put my backpack in the closet between the galley and the flight deck, so I pulled my MacAddict and Macworld magazines out and gave it to her. After a few more standby passengers boarded, the door was closed and we prepared for departure. The flight attendant did the usual safety demonstration, and I noticed that the CD player which contained the audio for the demonstration looked pretty much like a standard car stereo head unit. We pushed back from the gate at 1941, and headed for runway 30R. During the taxi, interesting aircraft I saw included a Mexicana 757, Southwest's 737-300 Arizona One N383SW, Horizon Air/Frontier JetExpress CRJ-700 N602QX, and United 737-300 N390UA in new colors. Once we reached the end of the runway, we taxied into position and were rolling for takeoff at 1956. I started reading the American Way magazine, and once it was safe, the flight attendant began the beverage service. I requested a cup of cranberry apple juice, which was served with pretzels. Our initial cruising altitude was flight level 290, but we reached some turbulence so in his announcement after turning the fasten seat belt sign back on, the pilot handling the speaking to passengers duties advised that we would be climbing up to flight level 330. We did and things smoothed out again. As our little jet continued its southward flight, I finished the American Way magazine and looked out over a nighttime California. I noticed a second disadvantage of Seat 1A. Having a wall meant not only was there no seat in front of me to put my backpack, that same space is also nice to put my feet and stretch my legs a bit more, especially if there wasn't anything stowed there. We began our descent, and made a left turn to cross the coastline and head inland for our approach over my alma mater, the University of California at San Diego. We continued our descent, turning base and then final for runway 27. As we flew through downtown, the buildings didn't seem as close as I remembered. I also saw Petco Park, the new home for baseball's San Diego Padres, which was still under construction when I left San Diego in 2002. Touchdown occurred at 2103, and after landing we had a short taxi to our gate. We blocked in at gate 31 at 2106. The flight attendant gave me my backpack and I headed off. I hadn't been in this part of Terminal 2 East before, my previous flights in and out of there were on Hawaiian, which at the time was handled by Northwest out of gate 22, right next to the security checkpoint. I followed the signs to baggage claim through more familiar territory, past the America West gates and down to baggage claim. During my walk, I noticed that both a JetBlue A320 with the dots tail and a Hawaiian 767-300 were both parked at Terminal 2 West (Delta, which uses 2W, now handles Hawaiian flights at San Diego). I noticed several bags sitting near American's baggage service desk, mine was among them, having flown down on the 1820 flight as the SJC agent said it would. After getting my suitcase, I headed outside to pick up the shuttle that would take me to Advantage Rent-A-Car, where I had reserved an Economy car for the weekend. With the late evening arrival, instead of getting my reserved Kia Rio-or-similar, I ended up with a Dodge Grand Caravan. There are advantages to picking up a rental car at the end of the day. Sunday, September 12, 2004 American Eagle flight 3214 San Diego, California (SAN) to San Jose, California (SJC) Scheduled: 1902-2024 Actual: 1859-2017 Embraer ERJ-140 N827AE Seat 6A I arrived at Advantage to return the van at 1730. There was a bit of a line for an agent to close the rental; only one person was working, with five vacant counters. Eventually, another guy came out and collected the paperwork for those of us returning cars, and then called us one by one to finish things up. Eventually that was all done, and the van arrived to take everyone to the terminal. I got off at Terminal 2E, and headed up the escalator to check in for the flight. There was a couple people in line to speak with an agent, and several empty kiosks, so I went to a kiosk to check in. I then had to wait several minutes, and eventually had to wave to get an agent to come down and check my suitcase. After tagging it, she instructed me to take it over and drop it off with the TSA agents. After doing that, I headed over to the security checkpoint, where there was a very short line. Overall, in fact, it was rather quiet in 2E. Unlike the mornings when I had been flying on Hawaiian to Honolulu, with not just our full 767s, but other Northwest, American, and Aeromexico flights. The security checkpoint had something new. After placing my backpack on the x-ray belt, I was directed, along with everyone else, through an Explosive Trace Detection portal. One person at a time walks into it, it blows a puff of air and analyzes it for a few seconds, then after determining you're clean, the clear doors on the back side open and you head over to the usual metal detector. Went through both with no problems, collected my backpack, and headed out to gate 31 to wait for my flight. More info on the ETD portal can be found here: http://www.tsa.gov/public/display?theme=44&content=09000519800b827d I didn't have to wait long for boarding to begin, but before that happened, they announced that the flight was oversold and they were looking for volunteers who would give up their seat in exchange for $250 travel voucher and a confirmed seat on a Monday morning flight. I didn't volunteer, as I had class at 0800 on Monday. Shortly after that, boarding was announced. Rather than boarding by groups as they had done in San Jose, all passengers were invited to board at the same time. The jet seats only 44 passengers, so that doesn't cause any problems. I boarded and settled into my seat, with my backpack in the overhead bin. I appreciated the Embraer's nice big windows as passengers finished boarding, and watched the arrival of Frontier A318 N801FR and Mesa Airlines/America West Express CRJ-900 N916FJ. We pushed back from the gate at 1859 and headed for runway 27. The flight attendant did the safety briefing, and we were rolling for takeoff at 1910. As we climbed out and headed north, I started reading Macworld, having not had the chance to previously. The flight attendant came through offering drinks, and even a choice of snack: Pretzels or cheddar cheese snack mix. Since I had the pretzels on the flight down, I went for the snack mix, along with apple juice, no ice. After completing the service, he offered a second round of beverages, but I passed on the offer. Soon we began our descent, touching down on runway 30R at 2013. Our touchdown seemed very late, we were almost to Terminal A before our wheels hit the ground, and then we had some hard breaking to slow us down. We pulled off the runway and headed for gate A16, coming to a stop at the gate at 2017. After disembarking, I headed through the quiet American gate area and the busy Southwest gate area to baggage claim. Bags were rather slow in coming, but once they did it wasn't long until mine arrived. I retrieved my suitcase and headed outside, again for a bit of a wait until the shuttle to the parking lot my car was in arrived. It did; I was the only passenger to get on. After a brief stop at Terminal C to pick up no more passengers, we headed to parking, and the driver dropped me off next to my car. Suitcase and backpack in the trunk, I started the engine, and headed back to Monterey. -- David Mueller / MRY dmueller@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.quanterium.com