My Return to Flight

Hi everyone. Again I just wanted to thank everyone here on NYCAviation for their support. It means more than I can say.

With that said, I am returning to the skies for the first time since the plane crash. Ironically it will be on the 2 month anniversary of the horrible disaster that claimed the life of my best friend.

July 9, 2012

DL1947
Departs: New York-LGA 12:00 Noon
Arrives: Atlanta 2:29 PM
Seat: 32A
Boeing 757-200 (with AVOD)

DL1971
Departs: Atlanta 6:20 PM
Arrives: Daytona Beach, FL 7:58 PM
Seat: 26F
Boeing 737-800 (with AVOD)

July 20, 2012

DL1087
Departs: Daytona Beach, FL 2:05 PM
Arrives: Atlanta 3:40 PM
Seat: 22E
McDonnell Douglas MD-88

DL2386
Departs: Atlanta 4:35 PM
Arrives: New York-LGA 7:10 PM
Seat: 32A
Boeing 757-200

Good luck man. Glad you're headed back up!

Evan I only now learned of what happened to you. You have my condolences on your recent loss, and I'm happy to hear you are up to getting back in the air. Please let us know how the trip went! Hopefully it is for relaxation and not work

William

Phil: Thanks. It will be a good thing for me.
Megatop: Thank you. It has been very rough lately with good moments surrounded by bad moments. The trip is for pleasure and to help my mother out after a hip replacement. I will definitely post a trip report for this one and if I can manage, I will have some pictures and videos.

Trip report time! As you all know this was my first time flying since the plane crash two months ago.

Arrived at LGA only to realize they renumbered all the gates, so D2 wasn't the same Gate 2 as it used to be. D2 is apparently the old gate 3. So after figuring that out, I arrived at my gate and waited to board, but not without taking advantage of the iPads in the gate areas!

Delta 1947
LGA-ATL
Boeing 757-200 with AVOD
Boarded the flight and we pushed no problem. LGA was very quiet that day. We waited on line for a while but we were off runway 13 with no problem, and no fear behind the take off (which is good!). We had a full beverage service and of course I took advantage of the AVOD on board. After lots of waiting around, we were on our initial approach into Atlanta, touching down on runway 27L and arriving in Concourse E.
I purposely planned a nearly four hour layover because we all know Atlanta during the afternoon, and we all know LGA. However, I took advantage of the full four hours. First thing was first, I headed over to concourse F and explored the terminal. Absolutely beautiful! I snapped many pictures, and once I figure out how to upload them I will! I also decided to get some exercise and walk around the other concourses. By the way, concourse D is gross compared to the others. Decided to grab some food in concourse A at the chinese joint before heading over to concourse B to catch my flight to Daytona Beach.

Delta 1971
ATL-DAB
Boeing 737-800 with AVOD
First off, my biggest disappointment was this flight being a 737 over an MD-88. I always look forward to my ATL-DAB runs on the Mad Dog. We boarded the flight and we were ready to go, but of course plenty of ramp congestion kept us sitting at the gate for an extra half hour or so. After we pushed, we sat in a decent sized line that came about due to weather north and west of the airport. We finally got to take off on runway 27R. However I did get a little nervous on the take off roll since we really used up a lot of runway. We took off but I didn't really see us climbing much, which also made me nervous. Obviously if it weren't for crashing on take off in that Mooney, this wouldn't have bothered me at all. So anyway, we were airborn and flew down the coast to Daytona Beach and I opted not to have a beverage since we were already on our initial descent by the time they got to us. We made my favorite approach to runway 25R over the ocean and parked at gate 2. I had a surprise greeting by my friend and her children (one of them being my 3 and a half year old goddaughter who is starting to enjoy planes to her mother's dismay since she is deathly afraid of flying).

Good to hear the trip went well for you, it was an important first step.

Glad to hear your trip went well. It sounds like you did a lot of walking in the Atlanta airport.