First time on an RJ...
 

All Barbie-jet jokes aside, is there anything special I need to know when flying on these things? My father and I are doing PHL-CLE-DAY and return in April for a father-son trip to the USAF Museum. There's only two relevant questions I can think of:

1. Is a 40-minute connection in CLE doable without checked bags? Time window is 759A-840A.

2. About the checked bag thing: can you do 2 carry-ons on a small jet? I usually travel with a mainline-acceptable duffle and a Canon Gadget Bag for my camera setup.

Any advice appreciated.

You probaly will have to gate check the duffel

there really are no overhead bins to speak of. The bins are only on the 2 seat side of the plane (seats are 3 across as 1-2). They arent deep nor tall. So think of storing a winter jacket or a something the size of a purse at best.

Anything that wont fit under the seat in front of You, will be taken away at the Gate and returned to You at the Gate when you land. At least you wont have to wait an hour at Baggage Claim.

As for connecting flights, no sweat if you are flying into CLE also on a RJ as you will come into the same concourse as you are departing. If you are arriving in or connecting to a Mainline jet then you will have to deal with 2 different concourses and a very long way between them going up and down a very long escalator on each end.

My connection is RJ to RJ both ways, so that part is solved. And gate checking is cool...40 min same concourse sounds OK too. I've come into CLE, but not on CO and it was about 10 years ago. No recollection whatsoever of the airport.

That connection time is fine here in Cleveland, even from mainline to regional. However, please note that there are a handful of RJ flights that use the C gates in addition to Terminal D.

Enjoy Wright-Patt!

Thanks, I'm thinking that I will. I did 6 1/2 years USAF, and I'm a photo and aircraft freak, so despite the company (my father isn't, shall we say, the life of the party) I thnk it'll be quite the good time. I also listen to the museum's lecture series on iTunes...really good stuff for a free podcast.

Xb-70
 

No prob on the connection. Yes on the gate check of bags.

Superb museum at W-P. ^ ^ They have one of the last remaining XB-70's supersonic bomber. We only made 3 of them, one crashed into a photo-chase plane. Where's the third one??

Be sure to put the Udvar-Hazy branch of the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum (at IAD):-: :-: on your list of fantastic places to visit. They have the prototype Boeing 707, whose test pilot flew a slow roll at a Seattle airshow, over a group of potential buyers. :D Boeing management was apoplectic, but the buyers loved it, and bought 707's! They also have the Rockwell Space Shuttle Enterprise, and the B-36 Enola Gay. I was priveleged to sit in the cockpit of Enola Gay when she was at Silver Hill. She saved my uncle's life. In 1945, he was a 19 year old Navy landing Craft coxwain, slated for the first wave to invade the Japanese homeland. He'd of been toast. Cannonfodder.

B7

How do you mean yes? Yes, in that I will be gate checking something duffle-sized?

USAF Museum's fact sheet says that only two were built, and FWIW, Enola Gay was a B-29. I'm proud to say that I own Gen. Tibbett's autograph.

The B-36 was famous for entirely something else...B-36 had ten engines, hence the tagline "Six turning/four burning" because of its having six props and four jets.

Udvar-Hazy is very much on my list, but I'm waiting to do a DC trip until Natural History comes out of renovation, which IIRC is this summer.

A slight correction to your post. The Enola Gay is actually a B-29. It like the other B-29's was manufactured at the Martin plant very near here (Omaha). The headquarters of the US Strategic Command, which oversees our nuclear strike capabilities is headquartered here now. The museum formerly associated with the air force base tried for a long time to get the Enola Gay brought back here from the Smithsonian before Udvar was built. Previously they only had the cockpit on display at the Air and Space museum. As for the B-36, it debuted after World War II as the replacement for the B-29 as a nuclear delivery vehicle. Like the XB-70 they are incredibly rare today. There is one B-36 here, one at Wright Patterson, and one or two in other places. That is it. The plane didn't last long and was quickly phased out with the advent of the B-52's which the air force still uses today.

Who better to comment on all things B-29 than a guy named "Mr. Nuke"? Slightly OT but admittedly hilarious.

Wright-Patt is a great way to spend a free day. I enjoyed the Air Force One 707 (the Kennedy plane.) Also they have on display one of Pres. Eisenhower's Cessna planes, painted in Air Force One livery. ^

The other 707 is on display at the Reagan Library, and it's a hell of a story how they dragged that airframe along I-5 and up a mountain to get it into its enclosure in Simi Valley. Not only looking fwd to W-P, but I also get two new routes and two new jet types on my FlightMemory.

what's strange about this is that I called CO the other day, to ask about this, because it's only my second time on RJ, and the guy on the phone told me that the 145 had enough room for anything I would want to bring aboard...I guess ppl here know better

Yeah, it technically does, because anything that doesn't fit under the seat in front of you or in the overhead goes directly in the cargo hold ;)

Is there a term for where you leave your bag at the end of the jetway for an RJ flight and it's returned at the end of the jetway upon landing? When I think of a "gate check" for baggage, I think of it being converted from "carry on" status to "checked baggage" status, getting tagged to your final destination, and retrieved by you at the baggage carousel.

To the OP, one thing you should make sure you think about and that we should discuss here is the extra time needed to wait for you bag on the jetway for your RJ connection. It will add another 5-15 minutes of waiting time. You may feel more comfortable checking your bag through to your destination to make sure you don't have to wait for your bag and can just run to your connecting flight.

I'm sure there are lots of opinions on this.

I can't believe none of you have warned him about banging his head on the overhead....
He'll do it even with the warning.;)

I have started traveling with a large day pack stuffed to the gills (about 1' by 1.5' by 10"), and can cram that into the overhead bins on the 145s. If a carryon is malleable and not much taller and wider that 1' (or a tad more), you can probably cram it in.

im sure it isnt a hard cased bag, thusly you will have room to get it in. If it has wheels on it as some do today its a much greater chance of it Not fitting in. Im sure a laptop bag will fit in just as well. I got carried away saying a purse. But wanted to let them know that although there is a Bin, its a very far cry from what one will find on a Mainline

Also if it wont fit and gets taken away then I would want to make sure to either have locks on it or remove any valuables, least they disappear while being loaded or unloaded into the Hold. Thusly going on the assumption that it will be Gate checked, Im sure the proper precautions would have been made. Assuming the Bins are big enough for anything, I doubt the proper precautions would have been taken

I carry my weekend bag (medium duffel) on CO RJs all the time. Squish-ability is definitely the key.

I'm 6'3" and father is 6' - somehow I think there's going to be a few headbangs despite warnings. The duffle that I had mentioned is indeed very squishable, so I think I can quash any notion of gate checking.

6'-3" Not only will you bang your head on the overhead but you'll get the scar of shame exiting the plane. (The door opening is really low)
Have fun at the Air Force Museum. I try to get there every few years and it's a full day.

Bumping my own thread for the end of the trip - RJ experience was dare I say fun. I didn't even bump my head - at all. IMO, XJet is way more gooder than CHQ...had the privilege of sampling both along with a leg on CommutAir. I turned out to be wrong about gate checking - checked on all 4 flights.

Some people would consider the following a stereotypical comment, but I don't care: does Cleveland's Jewish population have anything to do with the quality of the bagels in the airport? ^^^^ if so. I thought only the NYC area knew bagels.

Ask about Hangar 18, where the alien bodies are. Oh, BTW, my fathers uncle's plane is hanging at W-P, but i don't remember which one. They also have a ME262, one of my favorites.

A friend of mine who moved from NY to Cleveland tells me that the city on the Cuyahoga is far more urbane and cultured than it gets the credit for.

On an asociated note (very OT) one should not assume that bagels and Jews go together. One of NY's most highly regarded bagelries, H & H Bagels (too massive and sweet to my taste), was created in the early 70's by two Puerto Rican partners. One partner sold out (and was tragically murdered driving a livery car in the Bronx a few years ago) and the other partner has realized the American Dream.

Point well taken - I don't make the automatic association as some people still might (hence phrasing it as a question), but there are still certain stereotypes out there regarding ethnicities and their attendant specialties that are not necessarily negative or incorrect...when people think diners, most people still think Greek, no? Or even if the thought is there, is it now somehow un-PC to admit it? :confused:

edit: forgot to add misplaced ethnicity story of my own to match yours: ever hear of Tito's Vodka? Great example there...people think vodka, the immediate assumption might be Russian or Polish. Nah. Mexican. Distilled in Texas. No joke.

It is a mistaken association. Many assume Jews make lots of good bagels. In reality, Jews tend to EAT good bagels, regardless of who bakes them. And preferably with a smoked fish and a good shmear at the luncheon following a Bar Mitzvah or something. :D

Very true, although the bagel clearly transcended its yiddishkeit quite some time ago and is now firmly a part of the mainstream American popular food culture, in much the same way as pizza is no longer strictly an Italian dish.

I knew I was old school (or should I write old schul?) when I walked into a hip bagel shop in Boulder a few years and involuntarily recoiled when I saw blueberry bagels...:eek:

Now, if you want a truly Jewish bread, try a bialy, which never made it mainstream because it doesn't keep nearly as well.

Finding a good bialy (even in New York) is very challenging. There are only two or three great bialy bakers left in NYC.

Spinach, sun-dried tomato, whole wheat everything and natural grain (there are oats on the outside, among other strange things) are just a few of the "varieties" that exist now in the local shop here in NYC. I've also seen the blueberry ones and chocolate chip at various locations.

Growing up we had a very limited selection: Plain, sesame, poppy, cinnamon raisin, pumpernickel, onion and garlic were the choices, along with bialies. Everything else is, IMO, a shonda. I'm somewhat inclined to give the everything bagel a pass since the basic ingredients are the same as the historically approved list, but I still haven't really decided.

The bialy dough is different from bagel dough, the prep is different and most importantly, back in the last century, bagel bakers and bialy bakers belonged to different unions so the two products could never be made in the same bakery. (The preceding information is from my deceased parents so I can't truly validate it.)

I much prefer a bialy to a bagel, particularly the tasteless gentile product that's taken over the bagel world, but they're almost impossible to find.

[QUOTE

Some people would consider the following a stereotypical comment, but I don't care: does Cleveland's Jewish population have anything to do with the quality of the bagels in the airport? ^^^^ if so. I thought only the NYC area knew bagels.[/QUOTE]

only NYC and Detroit have decent bagels. its the water. CLE is an almost, although I cant believe anything at any airport is really good.

only NYC and Detroit have decent bagels. its the water. CLE is an almost, although I cant believe anything at any airport is really good.[/QUOTE]
Have you tried some of them in Miami/Miami Beach? Can get a decent bialy here too.

To each is their own of course, but I thought the everything bagel at the place in Terminal D was well above average.

See how flying on an RJ lowers your overall standards? :p:p:p