Things in the Sky

Southwest Flight #1746
May 22, 2009
Depart Providence (PVD):  1:00 PM
Arrive Ft. Lauderdale (FLL): 3:55 PM
Duration:  2 hours, 55 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 737-700 (N904WN)
Seat: 14A

As my parents and I started boarding (we had A20, A21, and A22), the person who had A1 showed up, and I felt kind of bad, as she definitely paid a hefty premium for Business Select. I get the sense that this might have been her first trip on Southwest, as she didn’t know that the airline uses open seating. I’d also like to commend the gate agent doing check-in – she quickly noticed a couple of line jumpers and prevented them from getting onboard. There have been a good amount of complaints about non-enforcement on FlyerTalk, so I was glad to see someone get it right (heck, I even wrote Southwest about it).

Photo Credit: My dear mother.

Anyway, I plopped down in 14A and we pushed back right around our 1 PM departure time. As we taxied to the active, I noticed one of ExpressJet’s charter aircraft parked on the ramp. I wonder why it was at PVD.

In a rare PVD moment, there was actually a wait for takeoff, albeit a very short one. Soon, we had blasted off runway 23, which provided some great views.

Newport (UUU)

I decided to take out my laptop quickly, but of course as soon as I did the person in front of me reclined, making typing pretty uncomfortable. But, I did test out using Gmail offline by using Google Gears, and it worked out great!

Soon the flight attendants took drink orders, and I ordered a Sprite. Peanuts (Southwest has switched back to honey roasted – yay!) and Wheat Thins were distributed.

I was planning to read on the flight, but for the most part I stared outside the window and listened to music. Eventually, I whipped out my GPS and set FLL as the final destination. It was pretty cool to have my own personal moving map.

Soon, we began our descent. I was hoping we would be landing on runway 9R since that approach comes in nice and low over the beach, but unfortunately 27L was the active that day. That approach, however, provides some nice views of the airport and city. Eventually, we were down a few minutes early and after a short taxi we were in at the gate. A few moments after we arrived a, JetBlue A320 pulled in next to us.

There wasn’t a long wait to get off, and the bags were out pretty quickly. Overall, a good flight.

The only real wait of this day of the trip was for the hotel shuttle, but once it came it was a very short ride. The Courtyard Dania Beach is your pretty basic Courtyard, but we’ve always been pleased and it was our third stay there for a cruise (they do offer a shuttle to the Fort Lauderdale port, but we were leaving out of Miami). Overall, it’s a good place, especially when the stay is paid for with points. Like fellow BoardingArea blogger Marhsall Jackson said in his review, I highly recommend flying down and sleeping in a hotel the night before a cruise. It just makes life easier.

After getting settled, we just went to a restaurant next to the hotel (The Islamorada Fish Company), and then relaxed at the hotel until it was time to turn in.