USA to Dublin:

My trip started on Saturday, November 21st with a car service taking me to XNA. (Bentonville/Fayetteville Regional Airport in Northwest Arkansas). I quite like this airport as it's new-ish, airy, quiet and has good service from AA, UA and DL. It's also insanely expensive to fly out of domestically because they have a captured market with Wal-Mart and all of their vendors. Oh well, it's close, nice and has precheck.

Check-in area:


And the escalators to the departures area:


Being Arkansas and given our state's obesity rate, one would think the civil planners might have done everyone a favor by not including a people mover for the 20-25 yard walk to the terminal. Just a thought.



Another busy day at XNA:





Ahh, life flying out of a small regional airport:


The other nice part of flying out of this airport as it has a really very good restaurant. Which is fantastic, because it's the ONLY restaurant in the airport. They just opened an Auntie Ann's and the poor kid behind the counter was so bored I'm pretty sure I saw him trying to stick his head in the pretzel oven. The other positive of this restaurant is they have outlets at every table. Who'd have thought, some rednecks opening a restaurant in Arkansas of all places would have the forethought to let us charge our devices!? Ironic considering half the population hasn't figured out how to wear shoes yet...

Menu:




Yay vacation!



Great burger:



AA flies a mix of CR7s and E135s between XNA and DFW/ORD. I make it a point to book when the CR7s are flying. They have a first class that is more than acceptable for such a short hop, plus as you can see when I'm flying Y upgrades are extremely easy to get. The seat and legroom:





I've yet to fly an American Eagle route in F where PDB is not offered, almost always open to whatever and even offering refills before take off. If only mainline were the same. Sigh. First world problems bearing down on me.

More to come, this takes a hell of a lot more effort to write than I thought!