Flight Log of American Airlines Flight 187 from Chicago O'Hare to Beijing on August 11th, 2016

Since our previous flight AA3365 arrived basically on time at Chicago O'Hare, we were left with 5 hours for our connection. What's more, FlightAware.com told me that our aircraft has quite some delay for its previous flight coming from San Francisco, which meant it's guaranteed to arrive late at O'Hare, so our connection could well be quite longer.

The images in this post are hosted on Imgur. Email me should there be any display problems.

Since Subway was closer to the gate where we got off the plane, and I reasonably guessed that airport McDonald's won't be this generous to offer McPicks, we picked Subway for lunch.

Having picked our seats at the tip of terminal 3 (for there're fewer people there at the moment, which meant fewer competition for power outlets), my whole afternoon was basically writing homework essays alternating with plane spotting, while listening to CNN reporting live the hunger games presidential race, and catching Pokémon basically for the last time in months. I had to see spending 5 hours this way wasn't boring at all.

It seemed to me that the Air Berlin A332 was towed in a circle back to where it was five minutes ago. Guess it's due to the traffic volume and complicated ground maneuver at Chicago O'Hare.

Finally it's boarding time. This time, there were nominally two lines to board the plane, one for priority and one for everybody else. But since we were delayed, everyone's free to pick the line that seemed shorter.

I processed the tones of the previous two pictures.

This trip I wisely picked the right-hand side window seat away from the sun. The clouds seemed equally magnificent, just without the bother of sun shining directly on the face.

Given AA 187's original schedule of (1750 to 2020+1), my original plan of dealing with jet-lag was to stay awake the whole day (for a little bit more than 24 hours). However, since Ithaca's so remotely located that our Syracuse Airport shuttle picked us off Cornell Dormitory at 0700, and I haven't caught any rest in the day, I was really tired not long after dinner services. Plus, my all-important homework essay was more or less finished since I was cramming for it basically the whole day, in the airport and on the planes. So, I convinced myself to take a small nap, which lasted more than half the flight.

We cleared immigration at PEK real quick, but waited quite long for our checked bags (Yes, I'm reserving harsher words for PVG weeks later). I found a note in one of my checked bags (which contained a computer without battery) that says some TSA officer has opened this bag for "random" security checks. I guessed that officer wasn't very good at dealing my bags, as I found my bag OPEN at the belt. Thank God, it wasn't an embarrassment as it still looked like a proper bag without clothing hanging out, and everything's accounted for.
The customs at Beijing Airport opened but two X-ray machines so there's another hell of a line there. As usual, they didn't bother to find anything taxable.

Since I slept for quite some time on the airplane, the next few days my body basically didn't have a biological clock. It seemed the slots (1750 to 2020+1) were a lot worse than it seemed if there's a previous connection at Chicago.
END