Thanks. ^ Now I'm like jr and curious to know what the other MEL item is.

It was weird flying over the Rockies at only about 15,000 ft AGL. Also, if there is any correlation we made a somewhat quick and to the point descent into HOU with spoilers deployed most of the way down. Of course, this could just be a simple ATC/traffic thing.

In my mind I was joking with myself that the runty little -500 was probably out of gas. (Yeah, I'm not a fan of the -500s and the day they are all gone can't come soon enough). On a more serious note, could the -500 even make HOU-OAK westbound? That would be pushing the limits of that aircraft.