IND-MCO Trip Report
Air Tran
737-700 w/ winglets
Scheduled departure: 7:20 AM
Actual Departure: 7:26 AM
Scheduled Arrival: 9:28 AM
Actual Arrival: 9:08 AM
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/TRS4 ... /KIND/KMCO
We arrived at IND at around 5:30 AM for our 7:20 departure. We went to the AirTran counter and checked our baggage (we printed our boarding passes online the day before) and we were through to the food court by 5:40AM. Due to the early departure, I decided to have breakfast at McDonalds (basically one of 3 restaurants open at the time). I found a neat little spot to sit and eat, it was a whole bunch of tables surrounded by windows and you were in between 2 of the concourses. I finished up eating and proceeded to security. I accidentally forgot to take out my Pepsi can from the day before so they had to search my bag. I made it to my gate (C4) and saw that the departure board read “Air Tran flight 403, Early: 7:10” That was ok, it was only 6:30 at that point. I sat down at my gate and proceeded to boot up my laptop to do some photo editing from spotting the day before. 5 minutes later a pilot came and sat next to me (it’s must be my good looks! :D) He saw my desktop background and so we started talking about aviation. He is a FedEx first officer who was deadheading the flight. We discussed Embry Riddle and my plans to possibly go there, and FedEx’s fleet, the A380 and 777 as well as other random aviation stuff. As we were talking, we were interrupted by the announcement to start boarding at 7:00 AM.
I boarded one group ahead of me thanks to the kind AirTran agent, and walked down the Jetway. Man, it was cold! Almost had to de-ice… In April! Got to my seat and started to get out my camera equipment, I decided not to try to go up to the cockpit before departure. The flight crew started their announcement at 7:25 approximately. Flight was about 70% full. A short taxi to runway 32 and a quick takeoff later and we were in the air by 7:30. Flaps up, and a super quick climb to 10,000ft. As we continued to ascend, I noticed that we were awfully high. Finally, we reached our cruise altitude of 39,000 feet, that seems awfully high! That raises another question, what was your highest ever cruise in a commercial aircraft? Unfortunately the sun was on my side most of the way down, so no Pictures at cruise.
The flight attendants on this flight was average, not the best I have seen, but not the worst. They didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves, and seemed like they disliked helping the PAX, but they still helped them. Snack service was Biscotti, and I had a Sprite.
The flight was a little bumpy most of the way, not too bad, but a few air pockets in the climb. The decent was a different story, the whole decent was pretty rough, some people were actually clasping their armrests, I enjoy turbulence myself so I didn’t mind. The pilot announced the weather, including the wind, “Winds northwest at 28 miles per hour”. I chuckled at that point because I knew it was going to be a bumpy and windy landing! We continued our decent into MCO, flew the downwind and turned on final, again, pretty bumpy! Finally the landing came, probably the worst landing I have experienced, but understandable, he was fighting a bit of wind shear upon landing. Actually, he did 2 hard bounces upon landing before finally settling down.
A quick taxi to our gate and the plane started to empty. I stuck around to stick my head in the cockpit and chat with the pilots. I teased the first officer on his landing and we joked about it. Nice guy. Took the tram to luggage A, what’s up AirTran? After spending nearly a half an hour in the terminal, we waited another half an hour for our luggage! Finally it came. Overall, a fairly decent trip, nothing to complain about, nothing to rave about, looking forward to our flight on the 14th for further review of AirTran.
PICTURES TO COME WHEN I GET A BETTER INTERNET CONNECTION!
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Originally Posted by uplander
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