Zoom YOW - MCO (All photos work now!)
I don’t get to fly too much with my current job, once a year or so. This trip report covers the flights for a one week family getaway from Ottawa to Orlando. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, took the kids to Walt Disney World, right? Well… yup :D .
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Our flight from Macdonald-Cartier airport (YOW) was Zoom Airlinesflight 623P. The aircraft was C-GZMM, named “City of Halifax”, a former KLM 767-300ER, as are all of Zoom’s aircraft. This was my second trip with them, a company actually based in Ottawa, having been so pleased with a trip last year that I even took the time to send them an email complimenting them on their service (for which I got a reply too!). That aircraft was identical to this one in all ways except for the name “City of Toronto” and of course the registration number C-GZNA.
First thing was to clear US customs (pre-clearance in Canada). Our gate was occupied by a Westjet 737-800, so we had to wait until it left before our plane could park at gate 12. To fit the 767, the airbridge had to be adjusted. A few minutes later, it taxied in, lining itself up down a different center line than the just departed 737 had used. On board, Captain Daryl Jackson announced our flight would be 2 hours and 33 minutes in duration, cruising at 38,000 ft.
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The aircraft was about 70% full, and it was 10:50 when we pushed back. Just before takeoff from RW 14, I asked a flight attendant about the “Destination Time” displayed on the monitors. It was 1 hour off our current time, but I was 100% certain that Orlando was in the same time zone. She advised me that the computer system hadn’t adjusted the time for this year’s early switch to DST :roll: . I guess they hadn’t installed the Microsoft patch.
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When we reached altitude, there was a complimentary drink and snack service. This was followed by the movie Happy Feet. I was the only one who hadn’t see it, but I decided to relax to just watch occasionally without using my headphones.
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The movie wasn’t half over when the meal service commenced. This was a real treat--a complete hot meal with wine. Because the monitors was being used for the movie, I couldn’t tell exactly where we flew over, but I figured we had just gone through central New York and Pennsylvania so I tipped my cap to the east to acknowledge all you nycaviationers.
The rest of the trip was very comfortable: hardly any turbulence, a nice comfy pillow had been placed on each seat, and it felt like we had plenty of room in two rows of what felt like 33” pitch seating (2-3-2 single class configuration). When the movie ended and I was able to lift the shade, we had passed Savannah and were hugging the Georgia/Florida coastline.
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The captain announced our ETA would be 10 minutes early and that we would begin our descent in about 5 minutes (hey, good timing). We entered over terrain at Daytona. This brought back memories of Spring Break... er... not the movie, but ages ago when I was single and went to Daytona Beach. I’ll leave it at that, but just to say that was also my first time at LaGuardia, aboard an Eastern Airlines either a DC-9 or 727.
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OK, back to the present… As we approached Orlando, we circled to the south of MCO, around East Lake Tohopakaliga and landed on RW 36L parallel to an MD81 landing almost simultaneously on one of the RW 35’s to the east.
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We taxied to the Airside 1 satellite terminal and into gate 27. It had been about 12 years since I’d been to MCO, but I immediately recognized the people mover (or was that in Tampa :? ). We quickly took the 60 second or so ride to the central terminal building and claimed our luggage.
The return trip
A week later we were back at the terminal being checked in to our Zoom flight by Air Transat agents at a one of those generic checkin counters--those used by any airline that can display their logo on the overhead electronic signs. It happened to be next to JetBlue.
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Our assigned gate was 22, which meant a ride out to the same Airside terminal (no surprise). From on board the people mover though, I noticed that it was actually sitting at gate 20--no biggie, and looking up at the board, it was now scheduled to leave a half hour early. I guess this is OK to do for a charter if they’ve got everyone on the plane. This time we sat nearly at the rear of the plane, again in two rows, which gave us two window seats. That’s possibly a benefit of traveling in a group of four in a 2-3-2 cabin. There were also 60 empty seats on this, the very last Zoom return charter out of MCO for the season.
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We were on “City of Halifax” again. Funny thing about excursions is you recognize some of the same people you flew with on the way there. There were quite a few other families (Orlando is like that). On the return flight, there was a lot of extra carry-on luggage, er… in the form of plush Disney characters.
As on all Canadian airline flights, announcements were in English and French. (So are the availability of the movie audio tracks, incidentally.) And so the same Captain Jackson announced that the flight plan called for a duration of 2 hours and 41 minutes cruising at 41,000 feet. At 15:25 we pushed back and headed out to the closest runway. 18L. On takeoff, we immediately banked left to turn around and head north. The service was much the same as on the way in, rated excellent, only the movie was different: Night at the Museum. This time I watched the whole thing and it wasn’t that bad for light humor (not the good either).
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We pretty much followed a similar route back but all was cloud covered. But when I looked out after the movie, we were just east of Finger Lakes. Some of the evidence of this year’s big snowfall in northern NY were still apparent. We went straight in to RW 32 and touched down at 18:20. Unfortunately, our luggage didn’t make it, but that was no surprise you saw chaos the at the baggage security area at MCO.
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