Trip Report: EWR-STL-EWR on Continental Express

Departure Date: 12/17/08
Route: EWR-STL
Airline: Continental Express (operated by ExpressJet Airlines)
Flight: 2717
Aircraft: Embraer ERJ-145XR Ship #971
Scheduled Departure: 8:00pm
Actual push back: 8:10pm
Actual wheels up: 8:41pm
Scheduled arrival: 10:17pm
Actual arrival: 10:14pm

Sometimes when I'm going on trips I'm not particularly excited about, I decide to spice it up a bit by taking a new route or trying to fly an aircraft or airline I've never flown before. Having never flown out of Newark, nor with CO, nor aboard an ERJ, I decided to do that on this trip. It also helped that CO was about $70 cheaper than AA, so off I went.

Throughout the day I was checking the flight's status. Weather had been iffy earlier in the day but cleared up. Thanks to CO's nifty "where is your plane coming from?" feature I was disappointed to learn my aircraft was expected to arrive from Albany a solid 1 hour and 52 minutes after my flight was scheduled to depart. The delay kept decreasing through the day, though, and by the time I left for the airport it was down to a 9 minute delay.

Adding to the adventure, I did very little research about EWR or how to get there...I just knew I would take the subway to Penn and then take NJ Transit to the AirTrain. Only when I got there did I realize how long it would take and how expensive it is. $15 each way?! And it took an hour and a half total from my house. Only after I boarded the AirTrain a few minutes after 7pm did I notice the boarding time on my electronic boarding pass: 7:25pm. Oops, maybe I should have left a little earlier.

Crawled around the airport in the awful little pods that make up the AirTrain. CoEx operates out of the last stop...Terminal A. After seeing how long it takes to get just to Terminal C, I cross my fingers hoping they still let me (pay them to) check my bag.

I get to the self-service baggage kiosk around 7:30...nobody behind the desk...I wonder how this works? I follow the instructions on the screen, swipe my credit card...card declined. Odd, I know that card should work. I try another. And another. None of my cards work and there's no one to talk to. Grr. So I move to the next machine, which happily gobbles up my $15 bag fee. Still, there's no one there to actually take my bag. I start walking away to look around for help, and finally a guy whose demeanor suggests he just got back from a weed break pops out of nowhere behind the counter, tags my bag and checks my ID. Off to security!

This was also my first time using an electronic boarding pass on my cellphone. I learned it's more trouble than it's worth. First off, I checked it on my Blackberry a few times to see if it worked. Sometimes the barcode at the top would not show up, requiring an annoying reload. Second, I suppose in an effort to make the thing more secure, unlike most webpages on my Blackberry, this one would essentially erase any history of itself every time my phone fell asleep. So rather than just restart the browser, I had to go into the email to get the link, and then click it to get my pass. Thirdly, TSA seems to still be working out the kinks in their processing of these things. The guy at the ID checkpoint had to scan it with a laser gun, which took a few minutes to get to read the code. When it finally did, the guy thought he had to walk me through the line for some reason. Another TSA guy told him he didn't have to, but in the process of him telling me where to go I managed to cut several people. Fine with me. Walked through the metal detector, showed the guy the pass on my phone ("oh, you one of these tech guys, aintchu") ...which brings me to my fourth problem with these passes: I had to go back out and then put my phone through the x-ray machine, then go back through again. Add to that the fact that the screener did not like my camera being in my bag (I've never been told to take a camera out before) I think I ended up going back and forth through the metal detector about four times. Annoying.

Finally made it through...and there are no signs directing you where to go, just a narrow corridor that looks like it could be a dead end or lead to something weird like offices. Stayed the course though and ended up at the terminal area, which to my relief had food because I was hungry. I picked up an Uno's pizza, a water, a copy of The Economist and some Motrin for a headache I had picked up. Boarding started a few minutes later...pretty good timing.

Took my seat in 11A and appreciated it. Leg room was fine and the leather seat was fairly comfy, and after about 15 mins we pushed back. And then taxiied. And waited. And taxiied. And waited. Very slow, took about 30 mins between push back and takeoff. Boo.

I'd say only about 30 of the plane's 50 seats were occupied. Flight attendant distributed pretzels and drinks, I did a little reading and fell asleep, not waking up until we were somewhere over Illinois I guess. Didn't see much of anything interesting from the air during my time awake. We descended and flew past the airport, making a U-turn to the left for a decently smooth landing on runway 12R.

Overall, I wasn't thrilled about the prospect of such a long ride in an RJ, but this seemed nicer than the CRJs I've flown before and wasn't bad at all. I really enjoyed the single seat.

http://map12.flightaware.com/flight_...ime=1229573640

Departure Date: 12/22/08
Route: STL-EWR
Airline: Continental Express (operated by ExpressJet Airlines)
Flight: 2868
Aircraft: Embraer ERJ-145XR Ship #180
Scheduled Departure: 5:06pm
Actual push back: 7:51pm
Actual wheels up: 7:58pm
Scheduled arrival: 8:40pm
Actual arrival: 10:39pm

Got dropped off at the airport around 3:30. For whatever reason, I just didn't check the flight status before we left. And to my dread, as soon as I walked into the terminal I saw a screen that said the flight was pushed back to 6:30. Ugh. I checked in, gave them another $15, printed my boarding pass and headed to security. By the time I got to my gate (A14) the delay had grown, to after 7. I tried to make the best of it...picked up some Starbucks and a water and grabbed a seat by the window to check out the traffic before dark. Sadly, there isn't much traffic to see at STL....a flight every 5-10 mins or so, and Southwest seemed to be the most common.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3127/...a5ece35b_o.jpg

After I sat down, now a few mins past 4pm, the woman at the CO counter announced that our plane WAS STILL IN NEWARK but expected to push back any minute. Fantastic.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3088/...83423dbe_o.jpg
I did some reading, walked around the terminal a bit, and snapped a few photos. Eventually the plane got there, and we left a little under 3 hours late.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3239/...d3ffe01a_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3075/...80ebcf6d_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3293/...c8b6fe14_o.jpg

This time I had the exit row, 12A. A few more inches of leg room than the regular seat, but I'm pretty short so it didn't make much difference. The flight attendant, a dead ringer for Lennox Lewis (without the muscles) served pretzels and drinks and before you knew it, we were beginning our descent...much faster going this direction.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3114/...27cac589_o.jpg

I was hoping for a 22L arrival and got one...beautiful view of the city skyline from my side of the aircraft. Unfortunately the darkness didn't make for great photos, but I tried.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3199/...ec69b63b_o.jpg

http://map5.flightaware.com/flight_t...ime=1230003540
Taxi to the gate was longer than I would have liked. I finally got my suitcase and made it to the AirTrain...and waited for that, too. Finally arrive at the rail station and I missed the train to Penn by a few mins...next one isn't for about half an hour, after midnight. Super. I finally got home around 1:40am.

Overall a good experience with COEx but I would not go to Newark again from where I live now, barring some insane deal or some unique route.

Great Report!

Looking at the STL board I noticed two odd airline flights both being DL.

One to DEN and One to Greensboro, Codeshare included No airlines fly non stop to Greensboro, nor does DL or the codeshare, NW/CO fly STL-DEN. Were both DL charters I wonder?

Alex

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alex T

Great Report!

Looking at the STL board I noticed two odd airline flights both being DL.

One to DEN and One to Greensboro, Codeshare included No airlines fly non stop to Greensboro, nor does DL or the codeshare, NW/CO fly STL-DEN. Were both DL charters I wonder?

Alex

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I happened to walk by the gate for DEN flight...it actually makes a stop in SLC, so it's STL-SLC-DEN. If you look at the board, Salt Lake and Denver have the same flight number and gate. Similar situation with the Greensboro flight: STL-ATL-GSO.