It must be a holiday weekend.
Jonathan here, talking to you from Washington Reagan National Airport. I’m flying tonight to Indianapolis, on my way with several friends to tomorrow’s Cards-Nats baseball game at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
And, like I said, it’s definitely a holiday weekend. Check-in lines at Midwest, AirTran, and ATA were quite long when I walked off the shuttle bus and in to terminal A. Northwest’s line was thankfully short and I breezed through my bag check and through security. Hot on my heels though was one of a few large student groups in the building. I didn’t watch them go through security (that seems like something the TSA would frown upon) but I would never want to be the chaperones responsible for a trip on its way through TSA screening. Talk about a nightmare in the making.
Even taking the school groups out of the picture (Wait, where did they go? I hope they’re not all lined up at the Jerry’s Pizza & Subs counter…) the terminal is plenty crowded for all of the airlines represented here.
Ahh, another strong indicator of heavy weekend travel — oversold flight needing one volunteer. Northwest is giving one passenger on my flight a free round trip ticket to take a connecting flight and it looks like they got their man shortly after the announcement.
Today is the beginning of my first of two three-leg trips for the summer. This trip’s routing is DCA-IND, IND-DTW-GRB, GRB-MSP-DCA between now and June 4. In July, I’m headed DCA-LAS, LAS-DEN-MCI, MCI-ORD-DCA. Toss in a week-long trip out to SFO in mid-June and it’s turning in to quite a busy summer.
The last time I was here waiting for a flight, you might recall, it was raining ice pellets and we were delayed on and on. Today the forecast is hazy, but overall nice. I’m watching a cadre of Airbus, Boeing, MadDogs, Bombardier, and Embraer jets lift off to the South.
Here’s hoping the rain holds off in St. Louis tomorrow.