The gate scene out the wing of this United Airlines Airbus A319 (N822UA) is not National Airport, the destination of my ticket. Instead, I have found myself at Dulles Airport after flight 626 diverted when National Airport shut down with thunderstorms over Washington, DC. Listening to Channel 9, we had enough fuel to hold over the city until 8:31 ET. A few minutes before that time arrived, ATC called up and reported that DCA was fully gridlocked. Our alternate was now active, sending us to Dulles. While DCA was locked up tighter than Fort Knox, we made a smooth approach on 19C to IAD.
We taxiied to the gate expecting to deplane and get a taxi to the city, however United dispatch decided to send up a fuel truck to fill up the tanks and make the 35 mile flight from Dulles to National. We are finishing up the fueling process now, and United says we are pushing back in about 20 minutes. I was given the option to deplane here at Dulles, but what self-respecting aviation geek wouldn’t take the opportunity to fly an A319 from Dulles to National.
Having heard more than my fair share of airline customer service horror stories, I thought it was very much worth noting how great the United crew has been on this flight, keeping us updated on the latest status while maintaining a positive and friendly attitude about the whole situation.
UPDATE: We pushed off the gate at 10:37 PM with information Quebec and taxiied to Runway 30, and were cleared for takeoff at 10:45. Our intern-extraordinare, Dan Webb, was flipping through Hemisphere’s magazine as we taxiied for takeoff. Like any good aviation geek, he stopped on the route map for a moment. Looking across the two seats at his open magazine, I joked. “You’re not going to find it in there.”
During the quick hop we made it as high as 7,000ft before landing on Runway 1 at 11:07 PM. We were back at the gate at 11:11 PM, making our total travel time a whopping 34 minutes. Twenty-two of which was spent in the air, compared to 12 minutes taxiing. All put together, the flight from Dulles to National was just about the same time as drive from Dulles to downtown D.C.
Last night reminded me of another short hop flight that United runs as normal scheduled service. Flight 3, which includes a leg from Kahului to Kona, Hawaii, clocking in at 18 minutes. That flight, flown with a much larger Boeing 777, hops between tropical islands before heading back to Chicago. DC was humid and downright tropical last night, but Hawaii it was not.
This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.
This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.