Now to the real trip

With the errands I had to run in South Florida done it was time to actually fly to Alaska.

The airport didn’t feel too crowded on this late Wednesday morning and both check-in and TSA were a breeze.












Fort Lauderdale FLL – Chicago ORD
United Airlines UA 1755
STD: 12:25 / ATD: 12:22
STA: 14:50 / ATA: 14:22
B39M N47569
Seat 8F



Someone vented their wrath on the poor safety card.










Descending over Indiana towards ORD.




Gorgeous view of downtown Chicago. Hopefully the weather is as good in a few weeks when I’ll be back.






A loop around DuPage airport west of Chicago…


…and landing in ORD nearly half an hour early. Since the airport is a massive construction site, it took us more than 20 minutes to reach the gate, but we were still early.

According to the signage, it was about 20 minutes’ walking time to get from my arrival gate to that of my connecting flight to Fairbanks.






Chicago ORD – Fairbanks FAI
United Airlines UA 2023
STD: 16:20 / ATD: 16:30
STA: 19:53 / ATA: 20:04
B38M N17347
Seat 7F





The cabin crew on this flight was especially cheerful, but the purser treating all passengers as “my friends” and congratulating them on “an amazing boarding process” was a bit over-the-top. Anyways, after that amazing boarding process we were soon on our way to… ?




Getting closer to our destination there were nice views of the Rocky Mountains in the late afternoon light.




We landed in FAI within the range of what is considered as on time and after getting my rental car I went off to the hotel I had booked for the night. The room was clean, warm and spacious, and the reviews I read beforehand were also not bad, although on my way to the hotel and later in the trip I heard some remarks that should have raised a few red flags. Check-in was off-premises at another location. As I did not find it right away, I asked around and one person replied, “Ah, that sh**ty hotel! It’s over there”. I also learned that the place had made it into the newspaper a few times, always for the wrong reasons, but I felt safe and had a good night’s rest after a long traveling day.