Now how many people have been through ITH?

I guess National Airport has been open for more than a week at the point I left. The economy lot was full. The terminal itself was a tomb, with one lone canine dog barking downstairs and sounding lonely. US checkin line was short and I was through it in 10 minutes. I noticed that they stopped asking the "do you have any sharp objects?" question.

Security seemed pretty normal, except you had to show your ID. I actually didn't see anyone getting their luggage hand-checked there. I did see four National Guards. I actually cleared security twice because I had to go back out to find an ATM. Still no bag checks.

Most things seem to be open beyond the gate, but I found it more difficult than it was worth to get breakfast. First, I tried lining up at the yogurt place. There was a guy working in the back, but he didn't seem interested in serving me. Fine. I looked to the left and there was a place selling muffins, but the line was too long. I waited about two minutes, got impatient, and realized Steak and Potatos was open. So I went there. I tried to order hash browns, but they were out. She offered fries instead. I asked for some eggs, and when she saw my twenty dollar bill said she didn't have change. So it was back to the muffin line. 10 minutes there and we weren't moving fast. The yogurt guy was up front, though, and selling someone a muffin, so I went over there. Oops, no frozen yogurt, too early. And he'd just sold the last muffin. At this point I gave up and decided to just starve. It seems weird that there were people there who were open and needed to sell things, but buying them was so difficult.

Anyway. The flight to Pittsburgh was about a third full, as was the flight to Ithica. We left southbound out of DCA, over Alexandria. Normal flights there. Extra security was in place at both airports, where some people randomly got wanded, and bags were gone through. Tompkins County Airport has four gates. After you exit the gate area they lock it down until the next flight is ready to leave. I think they have about 15-20 flights a day. There's not much to say about Ithica. It's pretty small. We wandered around and visited my sister. The only thing of note was that the rental car my mom got had 50,000 miles on it, and sounded like it was about to rattle to pieces. It really did sound awful.

I was on the 3:45 out from Ithica. We got delayed 1.5 hours, and I missed my connection in Pittsburgh and had to sit around for 2.5 hours for the last flight out. Ithica had the tightest security I've seen! Every single person got wanded down; the lady in front of me was looked at suspiciously when her shoulder kept setting off the wand, but it was determined that it was just her bra strap. Some suitcases were gone through, too. I guess they had time to do it since it's a small airport. Luckily there were plenty of seats. I think it was a mechanical delay for us, something about a bulb that burned out.

Anyway, the Pittsburgh airport was pretty nice in terms of airports to get stuck at, I have to say. Lots of shops and restaurants and all of it seemed open. TGIF was pretty good.

Oh, there was one flight that was ITH-BOS that was about five hours late. This college-aged guy was politely pissed off about it. He said that he'd heard them announce three times already that the inbound flight was in the air, which obviously was a lie. He was speaking forcefully to the counter agent, and demanded to see her badge so he could include her name in his report. She let him see it, then got very upset after he left, and walked off crying into the back room. I never saw her again, and someone came to replace her. Eventually the guy made it on his flight.

Oh, and flying back to DCA, I was a little nervous about the 10pm curfew. (The airport is only open from 7 am to 10 pm, as part of the new regulations.) Our flight was scheduled to land at 9:48 pm. We must've started boarding 45 minutes before departure time. Again, some people were randomly selected to have bags searched and get wanded. We pushed back about 5 minutes before scheduled departure time, it seemed. When we came in it was over DC, but we didn't quite follow the river. We were still flying close to the monuments and Pentagon and all. There was the 'no standing' rule enforced for the flight.

Gotta run now, though. I've got another flight to catch...

Nice report.

I lived in ITH for 4 years..and got to use the airport a few times, although I usually flew from SYR due to fares. ITH just lost its mainline Fokker 100 service back in September, and is now all RJ and props.

As far as the tight security, I'm not surprised. The security screeners have basically nothing to do, and from what I hear there are National Guard troops at the airport.

It's a great little airport, though. It was great to call at 6:15am cab and still have plenty of extra time to catch a 7am flight. SEA is a different story altogether.

What kind of fare did you pay ITH-DCA? I flew in that market quite frequently and had trouble finding anything under $200.

It's pretty expensive, I paid $203 plus taxes -- so $236 total.

I just average this with my $68 fare ($82 with taxes) to Buffalo, and consider it reasonable. It was one of those 'family converge in one place' things, though. I felt obligated to go.

11-13 years ago, Ithaca used to have F-28 and DC-9 service to/from SYR and PIT with Piedmont and USAir, as well as turboprop flights to PHL, EWR and LGA on US, TW and CO express flights as well as other light service (Catskills Beech 99) to BOS. Seems to be very much downgraded now.

I lived up there from 1987-94. Don't forget the nonstop service to Elmira! Actually, I think US still does this run but with a Dash 8 instead of a DC-9

PI/US used to run 737s up there too. Sadly, CO and TW are gone. With the advent of jetBlue in SYR, I wonder how much longer the LGA flights will survive.

Forgot ELM. I think it was PIT-ITH-ELM-PIT. There was also PIT-ERI-ITH-PIT.