Someone told me that it was going to be a busy travel day yesterday, and since I was flying up to New York, I’d better give myself plenty of time to get to the airport. So I did. My flight was at 2:40 PM and I left for Dulles at 11 AM, figuring that fighting all of the traffic and lines, I would get to the gate just in time.
I was at the gate at about 12:15 PM, two and a half hours before my flight was scheduled to leave.
I hate getting to the airport that early because I had to kill two hours, which was about 4 times longer than the flight itself. Actually, it turned out to be a little worse than that. The flight was delayed. At first, it was delayed 20 minutes, due to an equipment problem. Then, when they found that they didn’t have the part that was needed, it was delayed another hour and a half. So my flight, which was scheduled to leave at 2:40, was now not leaving until 4:30.
However, after a gate change, and a few more minor delays to allow the transfer of baggage, we were underway. The flight from Dulles to Laguardia on a 757 is 36 minutes. It took us closer to an hour. First, we were speed restricted because of all of the traffic going into New York. Then, we were held for about 15 minutes. When we finally landed, it was close to 6:30 PM.
With all of the delays, passengers commiserated and I was talking with two guys before boarding the flight, who were trying to get into New York. We talked about holiday travel trials. We also talked about where we were going and what we were doing for the weekend. One of the guys was heading into Manhattan as well, and so we shared a cab. It turned out that the taxi lines were not very long and moved quickly. And because we shared a cab, it cost me only $10 to get from the airport to Jen and Jason’s house.
And I was here by 7 PM, which is only about half an hour later than I would have been if I had taken the train the way I usually do.
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