Last year I flew down to Gulfport for a bowling tournament and ended up winning the all events category. I had to defend my title (which I did not), but I opted again to fly instead of drive.
Saturday I was up and out early. I did some exploring and watching to pass some time.
N706DN waiting to operate flight 295 to Tokyo. Again, that promise I made to myself. One day….
N711HK. I saw this one in Oakland just a few weeks earlier. I looked where it was going, but I don’t remember now.
And out the other side was a line of MD-80/90/95s. T-tails galore.
My aircraft arrived at 8:52 from Cedar Rapids. Today it was N717JL, the aircraft that pays homage to Joe Leonard. Almost as soon as everyone gets off the pilot got on the PA and said they were looking for a new aircraft because this one experienced (in his words) “primary stabilizer trim failure.” I can’t pretend to know exactly what it means, but the only thing that popped in to my brain was Alaska 261. As soon as he said that my devices lit up telling me my 9:45 flight was delayed until 1:30. This was going to be a problem. I was scheduled to bowl at 1 pm Central Time. I was stuck with whatever happened. It was too late to hop in my car and drive down. Thankfully that did not happen and a new aircraft was found relatively quickly. Stop rambling. There’s flying stuff to do.
Our aircraft was coming in from Dallas, but first we had a fun bit of confusion. We were all waiting at gate C35, then we were told (and even via a push notification from the Fly Delta app) that we would be leaving from gate B36. This struck me as very odd. I’ve never known 717s to depart from anywhere but C or D. A whole group of us hiked it over to B and to the very end of that concourse, only to find out we were actually leaving from C36. We got our steps in.
Now operating our flight was N947AT. Sounds like Geico’s phone number.
Delta Air Lines Flight 2312
ATL-GPT
Depart ATL – 9:41 am (was actually 10:30)
Arrive GPT – 9:56 am (was actually 10:36)
Boeing 717-200
N947AT
Finally at 10:07 I fought through the crowd of “it isn’t our turn to board, but we’re gonna stand here and block the way for everyone else” and took my seat in 24A.
And more T-tails out the window. We pushed at 10:30 and pointed the nose toward runway 8R (two in a row!). I never leave from 8R, so this was nice.
I had a nice view of the engine and the great sounds it makes.
Some last views of Delta Land before we got up out of there.
https://youtu.be/mT0JHGmvx00
This video of takeoff was pretty good once you get past the shaky hands in the beginning. Not only is it in 4K at 60 fps, but the sounds, man. What this video doesn’t show is me grinning ear to ear hearing and enjoying this little rocket ship. I love the 717.
It was a beautiful day for flying, and I was treated to some great views of Atlanta as we made the series of left turns to point the nose toward the southwest.
FTY
And even Six Flags. I can’t say as I’ve ever departed Atlanta in that particular pattern and turned south. Pretty hard for me to have a new experience departing Atlanta, but this was one. Great views.
Again, just a beautiful day to fly. During the flight I had a free hour of wifi as a T-Mobile customer, so I took advantage and screwed around with that for a lot of it.
Short and easy flight.
Eventually we descended in to cloudy Mississippi for landing on runway 14 and arrival at gate 5.
https://youtu.be/3y2M_OTFvRo
And a nice landing on runway 14.
N947AT about to load up and head back for Atlanta. I didn’t have a ton of time because I had to bowl at 1.
One of my teammates left this lovely split, but redeemed himself by picking it up.
After those days of bowling and gambling I had to go home. My friends drove. I flew. Worked out for me. They were in heavy rain through all of Alabama and just general bad weather all the way home. Weather was pretty bad in Gulfport, but cleared by the time my flight rolled around.
I got to the airport at 1:25 and asked about getting on the earlier flight. As it turned out the flight was totally full, and also totally delayed. It was an MD-88 with mechanical issues. Seems to be more and more a problem with those aircraft these days. Better them than me. I was content to stick on the 717.
Eventually they did get loaded and out very late.
I didn’t actually note what time my aircraft arrived, but is was more or less on time. Operating today was N990AT.
Delta Air Lines Flight 1376
GPT-ATL
Depart GPT – 5:51 (was actually 5:48)
Arrive ATL – 8:28 pm (was actually 7:50)
Boeing 717-200
N990AT
On this flight we did something amazing. First boarding call was at 5:30 with wheelchairs and what not. We pushed back at 5:48. We fully loaded this aircraft from first call to push back in 18 minutes. The flight wasn’t 100% full, but it wasn’t empty either. I’d guess 85-90% full was what we were. Still I couldn’t believe it.
I was assigned 18A, but some guy wanted to sit with his wife who was in 18B and he was assigned 17A. Trading a window seat for a window seat was fine with me. No problems there.
A few cool things to see as we headed to runway 32.
https://youtu.be/RKu48fuYxzc
Nice takeoff from Gulfport. I didn’t take a ton more pictures because we were heading to darkness pretty quickly.
It didn’t seem like we ascended all that quickly. Decent views, though.
The last bit of sun I would see for a while.
We ended up skirting the bad stuff that my friends were driving in, but we were in clouds all the way up at 31,000 feet. There was no cabin service because it was pretty rough the rest of the flight, even coming in to Atlanta. I had my free hour of wifi again, so I wasn’t bothered too much.
Going around the mess below.
There wasn’t anything else to see. We landed on runway 10 and brought it in to gate C41.
One last work. I didn’t hang around for too long because I had to get up for work Monday morning. Great flights. It was a fun weekend. No complaints. Hopefully my errors were minimal. Thanks for reading
