Forgive me, but I'm here with friends and the TV is going full blast (kids and AM TV, school's out for Easter vac), and I can't think or converse or anything, so what better than to post the beginnings of a trip report?

First, a question: what happened 2 days ago? Looked like weather in ORD: tons of UA cancellations, which meant that there were precious few gray tubes lurking around Logan.

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I don't care for US Air, and I generally book the outwardly silly BOS-IAD-BWI on UA, wasting an hour and several bucks and having to ride in the dread J-31 (one of the few times I have heard audible praying in the cabin has been on IAD-BWI in a J-31). A plus is 1000 extra MP points and 1000 extra bonus points, plus more if they're running a promo through IAD. Another plus is that (as a supervisor here said, "with your status with us you never have to fly in coach if you don't want to" - only a slight exaggeration). So I book half a dozen such trips a year.
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I had the usual routing, with the usual flights and I hoped some friendly familiar FAs, but UA cancelled me out for lack of equipment and rebooked me on US247, the nonstop I was trying to avoid. It was my first time in a while standing in line to check in. Arrived at 8:25, stayed in line until 9:10, when the checkin counters were in sight (I had to change my UA ticket so figured I couldn't go straight to the gate). Just about then they announced that passengers for BWI should go to the head of the line, so just as an aside I could have cooled my heels at the RCC in terminal C for 45 min and achieved the same result. Ticket man (US has mostly middle-aged men behind the counter) offered me a DCA flight half an hour later for free (subbed in a 733 for the scheduled I think 734 and lost a dozen seats), but I'd already made ground transport arrangements; got 4F, bulkhead. They were still asking for vols at the gate; found them I guess, and we took off on time. Seats were notably uncomfortable but there was great legroom, better than similar UA aircraft. No audio at all, and one drink service. Arrived just a touch late, not enough to get into the statistics. Pretty dull flight; the only interesting thing here that I see is the implicit question, why not just show up late and get called to the front of the checkin line, rather than waiting for up to an hour?


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Cheers
Michael *G