Originally Posted by LarryJ

I did a EWR-IAD-EWR round trip once where Washington (DC) Center was saturated and wouldn't take additional departures. The only way we could go was to stay below their airspace. We completed the trip going no higher than 10,000', sometimes lower. It just about doubled the flight time in each direction.


BOS-EWR will normally go up to about 14,000'. At least that lets us go faster, for a while, than below 10,000' flights.