Flights for a Day Trip to Detroit, 2024

August 11, 2024. I made a day-trip to the suburbs of Detroit to watch the Junior League World Series. This post would be about the flights back and forth, together with a few photos from the match.

Overlooking Boston Harbor during Takeoff

Ticketing

This day reminded me a lot of my trip to watch the Junior League World Series back in 2022. However, this time, I had moved from the suburbs of Washington DC to Boston. The match started at noon, so I needed to catch the earliest flight out of Boston. I found an American Airlines itinerary that departed Boston at 5:15 am, with a short 50-minute layover in Chicago, arriving in Detroit at 10:28 am—just in time for the match. This itinerary cost only 7.5k American (or Alaska) miles, which was cheaper and more flexible (with free cancellation) than the direct flights offered by JetBlue or Delta. Plus, I had elite status with American, which could potentially get me complimentary upgrades, so I chose American.

For my return flights, my only direct options were Spirit or Delta. Since it was a Sunday night, all the Delta flights were either expensive or poorly timed. I paid ~90 USD back in May for the Spirit flight departing Detroit at 8pm, which was a bit late for me but acceptable. It turned out that I overpaid for it, in the subsequent weeks that flight dropped to as low as ~55 USD. With free changes I should have the difference as a future credit with them, but since I only “changed” my flight instead of “cancel and rebook”, that didn’t seem to be the case. To make up for it, I placed a low bid of 20 USD for the “big front seat” and won, essentially getting a domestic first-class seat comparable to those on the big three US airlines.

American Airlines flight 1509 and 3428 from Boston to Detroit via Chicago

The miserable 5:15am departure time meant I had to drag myself out of the bed at 3am. Luckily, there was no difficulty hailing rideshare to the airport. Once I was there, the security line was short.
Probably because it was the first flight of the day, first class cabin was wide open. But somehow most of the upgrades were cleared at the gate (rather than in advance).
Weirdly, the boarding process was unusually long for no appearant reasons, so I sat in my seat and watched the distant horizons light up.

American Airlines 1509
Boston, MA (BOS) – Chicago O’Hare, IL (ORD)
Boeing 737-800 (N976AN)
Seat 2A
Scheduled Departure – 5:15am
Actual Departure – 5:35am
Scheduled Arrival – 7:10am
Actual Arrival – 6:46am
2 hours and 11 minutes

Here’s GPS tracking:

With the slight delay in boarding, we took off just minutes before sunrise, with the Boston skylight beautifully bathed in the soft colors of twilight. Here’s a video of the takeoff:

Click here to display photos from the flight from Boston to Chicago O’Hare.

Boston Skyline
Bathed in the morning sun.

Overlooking Boston Harbor during Takeoff

Overlooking Charlestown during Takeoff

Lowell, Massachusetts

Albany, New York
Confluence of Mohawk River and Hudson River.

Lansing, Michigan

The distance between Boston and Chicago O’Hare was 867 miles, right under American Airlines’ 900-mile threshold for meal services in first class. Before the pandemic, meals were offered for certain key routes under 900 miles, including this one. That hadn’t been brought back. As a result, the entire cabin service consisted of little more than a few snacks, which was unremarkable and, frankly, a bit ridiculous (To be fair, they were more appetizing than the Biscoff cookies offered in coach.) But since I had to get up early to catch this flight, I slept through most of it.

Fast forward to landing, the local time wasn’t too long after sunrise, and the rising sun still painted most of Chicago’s skyline in gold.

Click here to display photos of the slideshow

Chicago Skyline

Landing at Chicago Airport
Air-to-air shot of another United Airlines plane.

Air-to-air with Another Landing Plane
This was the best that my phone camera could do.

And here’s a video of the landing:

Unfortunately, once on the ground (“Actual Arrival” time above is based on when the plane leaves the runway), issues with gate availability and coordination with air traffic control forced us to circle the airport. It’s essentially the equivalent of driving around the block in rush hour in search of a street parking spot. It’s an additional half an hour before we arrived at the gate, 8 minutes late, so my connection time was cut to 42 minutes.

To make matters worse, my next flight departed from a gate (L26) that was 800m (0.5mi) from my arrival gate (H11A). With American Airlines’ lack of cabin service, I was starving at the moment. Fortunately, I passed a McDonald’s in the food court and, thanks to their quick service and mobile ordering (since there were lines even for the kiosks), I grabbed my food and dashed across the airport. By the time I reached the gate, boarding was nearly complete. It wasn’t the most graceful entrance to a first-class seat, panting and carrying a bag of McDonald’s.
By the way, American Airlines configured its ERJ170 to 65 seats (with 12 domestic first) to meet its regional scope clause. That meant upgrade spaces were widely available on this aircraft type and my upgrade was cleared 3 days in advance.

American Airlines 3428 Operated by Envoy Air
Chicago O’Hare, IL (ORD) – Detroit, MI (DTW)
Embraer ERJ170 (N791DK)
Seat 2A
Scheduled Departure – 8:00am
Actual Departure – 8:12am
Scheduled Arrival – 10:28am
Actual Arrival – 10:01am
49 minutes

Here’s a video of the takeoff:

Here’s GPS tracking:

It’s a bit unusual that the typical flight path from Chicago to Detroit takes an obvious detour north, beyond Muskegon, MI.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Apart from that, there’s not much worth mentioning for the flight. Here’s a video of the landing:

The Game

Self-Serve Table

My flight from Chicago landed about half an hour early. Afterward, I took an Uber and arrived at Heritage Park about an hour before the match started. By then, I was quite hungry since I hadn’t eaten much in the past several hours. I ordered a hamburger from the concession stand that had just opened, and the lady handed me a bun, a beef patty, and cheese over the counter, directing me to a table where I could add my own vegetables and sauces. It was quite an eye-opening experience.

A quick rundown of a selection of photos I took during the game. These photos are in the public domain.

Click here to display photos of the slideshow

Starting Pitcher for Asia Pacific Team

Starting Pitcher for Michigan Team

Discussions among Runners

Relief Pitcher for Michigan Team

First Run in the 6-th Inner
A throw to base that escaped the catcher, allowing team Asia Pacific to score an additional run.

Audience Cheering for Michigan Team
Probably the schoolmates of the Michigan team.

Post Match Celebration

Spirit Airlines flight 2018 from Detroit to Boston

The match ended just before 2pm, leaving me plenty of time before my flight back to Boston at 8pm. I spent part of that time in Lufthansa’s Detroit Lounge (while getting some work done).

Spirit Airlines 2018
Detroit, MI (DTW) – Boston, MA (BOS)
Airbus A320 (N647NK)
Seat 1D
Scheduled Departure – 8:01pm
Actual Departure – 8:17pm
Scheduled Arrival – 9:58pm
Actual Arrival – 9:35pm
1 hour and 18 minutes

Click here to display photos of the slideshow

Food Offering at Lufthansa Detroit Lounge
Much better than my previous visit, at least things looked edible this time.

Spirit Airlines A320 (N647NK)
My plane back to Boston.

Spirit Big Front Seat

With my successful bid for Spirit’s “Big Front Seat,” I experienced three different domestic first-class products in a single day. Personally, I would rank their comfort levels as follows: AA regional >> Spirit Big Front Seat > AA mainline.

• The old-school domestic first seats on AA’s regional were tried and true. I enjoyed sinking into their cushions after rushing through the airport.
• Spirit’s big front seat didn’t recline, and the cushion was a bit stubborn near my knees, but otherwise they were pretty decent. (The plane I flew on had their old interior.)
• I was just speechless about AA’s mainline domestic first seats. They were too slim and lacked the level of cushion from the previous two. It’s like they were deliberately designed to inflict suffering while still look good on the surface.

As for the flight itself, the boarding and departure was slightly delayed, but that was more than made up by a strong tailwind, pushing ground speed to over 1000km/h over upstate New York. A small disappointment was that, Spirit over-pressured the cabin to 1018mBar before landing, and my ears didn’t like that.

After that, I hailed a rideshare home and called it a day.
END

Flights for a Day Trip to Detroit, 2024 by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.