Flights for Weekend Trip to Seattle

A post of the flights that I took to and from Seattle for a weekend trip.

Overlooking Downtown Seattle

For the first weekend in May 2023, I had some personal errands to run in Seattle. I will not get into the details of those errands, so this post would be about the flights I took.
May was not a peak season for visiting Seattle, it meant United Airlines had a lot of award inventories open. Despite the most desired times were still unavailable, such as Friday late afternoon or Sunday afternoon; I nonetheless found a pair of flights that suited my schedule:

• Leaving Washington Dulles at 3pm, Friday May 5, connecting in San Francisco and arriving in Seattle at 9:30pm.
• Leaving Seattle at 1pm, Monday May 8, arriving at Washington Dulles at 9pm.

And since these were standard awards, it only cost 15000 miles round-trip when purchased through Turkish Airlines. I was a bit surprised that on Turkish Airline’s website (and from their phone agent), directly searching Washington Dulles to Seattle came back with no availability, but I could somehow instruct the phone agent to search “multi-city” of Dulles – San Francisco – Seattle, which was still priced as a standard one-way domestic award at 7500 miles.

Flight UA1893 from Washington Dulles to San Francisco

I was in no hurry on May 5, so I decided to take the silver line of Washington DC’s metro to Dulles Airport. As predicted, it’s a long ride but the cabin was fairly empty, and with video clips on my tablet, I didn’t find the ride boring.

As usual, once in the airport and past security, I decided to check out the Turkish Airlines Lounge with my PPS membership. It’s still early in the day for European departures, so the lounge was fairly empty. The food offerings were decent, but I was more impressed with the desert, such as sweet rice cakes.

ANA Boeing 787-9

Off to Tokyo Haneda. The boarding gate was right next to the Turkish Airlines lounge that some VIPs boarded directly from the lounge.

After a train ride, I made it to the boarding gate in United’s third-world terminal. The flight was fairly full, but I was lucky to get an empty middle seat next to me.

United Airlines 1893
Washington Dulles, VA (IAD) – San Francisco, CA (SFO)
Boeing B737-Max9 (N37549)
Seat 31F
Scheduled Departure – 2:59pm
Actual Departure – 3:14pm
Scheduled Arrival – 5:52pm
Actual Arrival – 5:39pm
5 hours and 25 minutes

Here’s GPS tracking:

Here’s a video of the takeoff:

Once airborne, the weather was largely good before crossing the Ohio River. As a result, I was given a tour of rural West Virginia. I was very surprised to find traces of snow on top of some mountains even in the month of May.

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Shenandoah River
Just outside Front Royal.

Roaring Plains West Wilderness
I was very surprised to see snow in West Virginia in May.

Shavers Fork
Just east of the town of Elkins. Some snow on the mountains.

Elkins WV

Buckhannon WV

Ohio River
Near Ravenswood, WV.

Ohio River

Near Point Pleasant, WV. The darker Kanawha River (whose tributaries include New River) merged into brown Ohio River.

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport
My previous flight was Cincinnati – Washington Reagan, taking off from this airport.

The clouds started to gather while flying over southern Indiana and Illinois, so I took some naps.
Probably typical for the season, there were some mild turbulences while we approached the front range of Colorado mountains.
From my GPS, I was excited to find out we were flying directly over Tenmile – Mosquito Range, home to some of Colorado’s highest mountains that I climbed last summer. Like a good friend that I haven’t seen for a while, I was eager to pick them out from above, but unfortunately the clouds didn’t cooperate that much.

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Mountains in Mosquito Range

The mountain in the lower right corner, barely outside the clouds, was North Star Mountain. To its north, Quandary Peak, which I summitted 8 months ago, was partly behind clouds.

Fremont Pass
Colorado Route 91. Climax Mine in the right of this photo.

Mountains in Holy Cross Wilderness

Colorado River and Mesas in Western Colorado

Utah Landscape
Eagle Canyon and Sid’s Mountain Wilderness

Flying over San Francisco Bay

After that, we flew right over Yosemite National Park. Unfortunately, clouds were thick over Sierra Nevada Mountains, so I didn’t catch any sights.
The thick clouds extended all the way to San Francisco Bay Area, beneath which was an undersaturated and gloomy landscape, as the following video captured the landing:

After landing in San Francisco, I had just over an hour of connection time before my next flight to Seattle, which departed from the very end of concourse G, half an airport away. This gate designation felt a bit weird to me, as most of United’s operation in San Francisco was from E/F gates. It turned out that my plane to Seattle (N405UA) did a roundtrip flight to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico earlier in the day, so it arrived at the international terminal. In addition, the morning flight to Puerto Vallarta suffered delay due to a diversion to Los Angeles, so its flights for the rest of the day were all delayed. In particular, the gate agent mentioned that since it’s an international arrival, it took time to clean and “secure” the plane. I felt the “secure” part actually took longer.
But on the good side, at the end of concourse G there’s an “outdoor terrace” with views of aircraft movements around the airport. A decent place for me to hang around.

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Outdoor Terrace at the End of Concourse G

End of Concourse G
Swiss B777-300, and United A320 (N450UA), which was my plane to Seattle.

View from Outdoor Terrace

American Airlines B738 (N998NN)

United Airlines A319 Takeoff

United Airlines A319 (N846UA)

Flight UA2385 from San Francisco to Seattle

This was an Airbus A320 with dated interior (which meant small luggage racks), which meant some bags had to be gate-checked; and since I didn’t want to stand in line to compete for that luggage rack space (for which the boarding group surprisingly didn’t matter), that included my bag.

Once onboard, the flight crew informed us that weather in Seattle wasn’t ideal, so we were assigned a wheels-up time. So our actual takeoff was almost an hour late.

United Airlines 2385
San Francisco, CA (SFO) – Seattle, WA (SEA)
Airbus A320 (N450UA)
Seat 31A
Scheduled Departure – 7:10pm
Actual Departure – 8:05pm
Scheduled Arrival – 9:27pm
Actual Arrival – 9:46pm
1 hour and 41 minutes

Here’s GPS tracking:

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Overlooking San Francisco Airport during Takeoff

Overlooking San Francisco Bay during Takeoff

Here’s a video of the takeoff:

Had the flight been on-time, I thought I would be treated with a spectacular view of sunset flying over the (clouds above) Sierra Nevada Mountains. But with the delay and a high cloud ceiling of 7300m, it’s almost dark when we climbed out of it.

In the end, I didn’t wait much before getting my gate-checked bag from the carousel, after which I joined my friends who had been waiting for me at the parking lot.

Flight UA2275 from Seattle to Washington Dulles

Fast forward to my return flight on Monday, May 8. I was dropped off at Seattle Airport just under 2 hours of my flight.

I’ve heard that Seattle Airport had such awful security wait times that they came up with a “spot saver” program, allowing travelers to make reservations for security checkpoints. In my opinion this didn’t address the root causes of long wait times, which was insufficient staffing and infrastructure for security screening. But with this program, the airport/TSA could somehow shift the blame to travelers: “Facing long security lines? Screw you! You should have made the ‘spot saver’ reservation.”
Since I had plenty of time and I didn’t think Monday noon was peak travel time, I deliberately decided not to try out “spot saver” this time. In the end, partly due to mechanical issues with an X-ray machine, it took me a staggering and unacceptable 34 minutes to clear security.

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Seattle Airport Terminal A Interior
A fair share of both fancy art and walking distance.

Boarding Flight to Washington Dulles

After clearing security, I checked out “The Club” lounge in terminal A with my PPS membership, which, “mediocre” would be a compliment for that lounge. It’s so underwhelming that I didn’t want to mention it.

United Airlines 2275
Seattle, WA (SEA) – Washington Dulles, VA (IAD)
Boeing B737-Max8 (N37257)
Seat 31A
Scheduled Departure – 12:52pm
Actual Departure – 12:58pm
Scheduled Arrival – 8:53pm
Actual Arrival – 8:21pm
4 hours and 23 minutes

Here’s GPS tracking:

Now to my flight back to Washington Dulles, once airborne, weather was fine over Seattle, affording me an aerial tour of the city and its suburbs. Here’s a video:

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Overlooking Downtown Seattle

Lake Union

Campus of Washington University

South Kirkland along Shores of Lake Washington

After that, it’s a quite uneventful flight that I spent between naps and video clips. Clouds were thick over the midwestern states so there wasn’t much to show.

Flight Reversed on IFE Display

The plane flew from Washington Dulles to Seattle in the morning, but somehow the crew didn’t reset the flight information. As a result, on the flight information page I watched the progress bar went backwards throughout the flight.

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Crown Mountain, Montana
On the eastern front of Rocky Mountains in the state.

Minnesota River

Mississippi River

Shenandoah River

Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center

Overlooking Dulles Airport

And here’s a video of the landing:

Upon leaving the plane, an elderly gentleman pilot professionally greeted all the passengers. I didn’t recall many pilots in the states that did this.
After that, I made it back home and concluded this trip.
END

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