Flight Log from Washington DC to San Jose via Philadelphia and Los Angeles, with American and Alaska Airlines

June 2022, a small group of my friends decided to hold an informal class reunion in the west coast, driving down California’s famous coastal highway before having some parties in Los Angeles. This would be my outbound flight segments from Washington DC to San Jose.

Monterey

There were a number of constraints on my flights to the San Francisco Bay area where we would be starting our road trip. I had to be there early morning June 8 (or the previous night), I didn’t want to miss some teleconference on the morning of June 8, and I didn’t want to leave too early in the afternoon on June 7, and I still wanted some sleep for the night. This combined with fare, my friends’ itineraries, and my flight credits with American Airlines meant I would be flying from Washington DC to Los Angeles via Philadelphia in the evening of June 7 with American Airlines, spend the night with another friend, then we would fly together on the morning of June 8 from Los Angeles to San Jose with Alaska Airlines.

American Airlines Flight 5549 from Washington Reagan to Philadelphia

By the time I arrived at the airport, a steady rain was falling, quite unexpected given the skies were calm earlier when I left home. But luckily, operations at the airport seemed unaffected.
Interestingly, the flight today shared the same flight number as my flight to Detroit earlier this year, which was quite a coincidence.

Click here to display photos at Washington Reagan Airport.

Dinner
From a PPS restaurant in the terminal.

Reagan Airport Terminal 2E
Newly constructed with fancy equipment.

My plane to Philadelphia

Boarding Flight to Philadelphia

Baggage Handling

With limited bin space, most of the carry-on bags needed to be gate checked. Unfortunately there wasn’t anyone handling them as the conveyor belt was rolling, meaning those bags got dumped into the rain. The passengers on the port side probably didn’t enjoy watching this.

American Airlines 5549 Operated by PSA Airlines
Washington Reagan (DCA) – Philadelphia, PA (PHL)
Bombardier CRJ700 (N518AE)
Seat 8A
Scheduled Departure – 4:30pm
Actual Departure – 4:38pm
Scheduled Arrival – 5:32pm
Actual Arrival – 5:05pm
27 minutes
Here’s GPS tracking:

Since it’s a relatively short flight, I used my GoPro to record the entire flight. It’s a rainy day around Washington DC with 1500m cloud ceiling, and we had a limited cruise height of 3460m, so most of the flight was in and between clouds.

Portions of the video at cruising altitude were sped up.

It started to drizzle just after we landed in Philadelphia, probably the same patch of clouds from Washington DC. We arrived at Philadelphia’s terminal F, built for regional jets. My next flight would depart from the mainline terminal B, which was a (very bumpy) shuttle bus ride away.

Click here to display photos of the slideshow

Deplane at Philadelphia
The regional terminal F didn’t even have jet bridges. An improvised set of stairs will do.

Terminal F Food Court and Shuttle Gates

Planes Parked at Philadelphia Airport

Planes Parked at Philadelphia Airport

Terminal Interior

I found an empty gate and took a seat. I didn’t like the seating in Philadelphia. It’s a choice of back support or charging ports, but not both.

American Airlines Flight 2321 from Philadelphia to Los Angeles

Then it’s my next flight to Los Angeles. While the plane (N410AN) had been ready at the gate for a few hours, the boarding process was significantly delayed. It ended up that the inbound crew from Florida was delayed due to weather. It felt kind of surprising to me that American Airlines would separate crew and plane scheduling, maybe it’s a sign of its short-staffedness that pushed things to extreme.

American Airlines 2321
Philadelphia, PA (PHL) – Los Angeles, CA (LAX)
Airbus A321neo (N410AN)
Seat 10F
Scheduled Departure – 6:45pm
Actual Departure – 7:35pm
Scheduled Arrival – 9:30pm
Actual Arrival – 9:54pm
5 hours and 19 minutes
Here’s GPS tracking:

Against the backdrop of travel frenzy for 2022’s summer, the plane’s not very full, with most (if not all) middle seats Main Cabin Extra empty.
I recorded the following video for takeoff, which felt very quiet from the neo’s engine.

Clouds were at 3000m and 7000m over Philadelphia, so there weren’t many interesting sights along the way. I’d hoped to catch some sights of the midwestern mountains under twilight, the departure delayed dashed that hope. And weirdly, I felt the cabin was sort of cold.

About halfway through the flight, I saw we were flying around some thunderstorm, and it’s quite a show of the lights.

2 seconds, 10 frames per second, ~2MB file size.

Click here to display photos during flight.

Illinois River

Mississippi River

Mississippi River

Missouri River

Topeka, Kansas

Flying in Clouds

The clouds we flew through seemed pretty dense with water droplets. I was curious why we didn’t choose a higher altitude to avoid these clouds as we were only at 10300m elevation. Yet on the plus side, it’s got a Sci-Fi feeling.

Los Angeles Suburb

SoFi Stadium

I spent the night at the nearby Fairfield Inn Los Angeles Airport, what I would call a typical airport hotel, good for an overnight stay but nothing more. My friend arrived on a different flight earlier than me, so I took a quick shower and headed into bed.

Alaska Airlines Flight 3329 from Los Angeles to San Jose

The next morning, after not too much sleep, I woke up early, attended the teleconference, grabbed some breakfast at the hotel (which I would say was mediocre), and headed towards the airport. There wasn’t much waiting for either checkin or security.

Click here to display photos of the slideshow

Ramp Construction

As a result of which Alaska Airlines lost a few gates at Los Angeles Airport. Thus we would be boarding today’s flight via a shuttle bus.

Boarding Shuttle Bus
My first time riding a shuttle bus to and from the plane in the United States.

Boarding Flight to San Jose

Boarding Ramp

For the second time in two days (and first 2 times in my life), I walked on this type of boarding ramp.

It’s a bit awkward that the remote stand where we boarded the plane was near the start of runway 25R. However, probably because we were flying north, we were given a long taxi around the airport to the start of runway 24L for takeoff. Thus, despite the boarding being mostly on time, our takeoff was half an hour late.

Alaska Airlines 3329 Operated by SkyWest Airlines
Los Angeles, CA (LAX) – San Jose, CA (SJC)
Embraer ERJ-175 (N177SY)
Seat 9A
Scheduled Departure – 8:55am
Actual Departure – 9:26am
Scheduled Arrival – 10:12am
Actual Arrival – 10:17am
51 minutes
Here’s GPS tracking:

Clouds were at a low 500m over Los Angeles, which didn’t clear out until San Barbara Channel. After that, we were mostly flying along California’s coastline, giving us a preview of the road trip for the next few days.

Click here to display photos along the flight.

Channel Islands

Santa Barbara

Grover Beach

Pismo Beach

Morro Rock

California Coast

Mountains along California Coast

Mountains along California Coast

That’s especially true during our descent, where we were given a distant tour of the coastal town of Monterey, where we would be spending the night.

Click here to display photos along the flight.

Monterey

Monterey Peninsula

Monterey Bay

Elkhorn Slough into Pacific Ocean

Watsonville

Mt Umunhum
With its radar tower.

It’s a short flight, just under an hour, which I spent between chatting with my friend and taking in the scenery. Here’s a video of the landing:

The linear structure of San Jose’s terminal meant the baggage claim was some distance away from the gate, that combined with Alaska’s prompt baggage handling meant my bag made it to the carousel before I did. After that, we took a taxi ride to the rental shop and started our road trip along California’s coast.
END

Flight Log from Washington DC to San Jose via Philadelphia and Los Angeles, with American and Alaska Airlines by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.