Friday, November 17
Access Air ZA117
N623AC 737-200
LV DSM 4:55pm
AR MDW 6:05pm
took seat 3A

Sunday, November 19
Access Air ZA219
probably same aircraft, but not sure
LV MDW 6:35pm
AR DSM 7:45pm
took seat 18F

The Aircraft

The first flight of mine was on N623AC but I'm not quite sure about the second flight because it was too dark to see the reg number. The aircraft was an oldie-but-goodie 737 200 series, a type that I am favorable with. It was probably the same aircraft for both flights. The colors on the inside were blue, green, maroon, and gray. The carpet looked chalky-blue because there were mostly blue strands with some white. The seats were in this pattern: blue seats with gray cloth that goes behind head on seatback. These were A,C,D, & F. And then there were the green seats with maroon head-cloth things. These were B & E. But the last 5-6 rows were all blue seats. The seats seemed to have shorter than usual seatbacks. It was in a one-class layout. The legroom up front was more generous than it was in the back. There was one lav up front behind the cockpit on the port side. There were two in the far back on each side. Galley/crew areas in front and back. A bulkhead was in place in front of all of row one except for the aisle opening. This was unlike some other 732s I've been on with no bulkhead on the port side.

The Flights

Friday: Drove to my parent's house in Des Moines. They took me to the airport. Got dropped off and checked in at the ticket counter about 80 minutes before flight time. No checked baggage for this trip. Was told that the flight was open seating, got boarding asignment number 12. Boarding was started at about 3:30. They didn't ask for numbers so I was 2nd on the plane. Took seat 3A. Good legroom in this seat. A woman took the aisle in that row but there was noone in the middle seat for the flight. The first officer came on the PA and announced that they computed the flying time at 46 minutes in the air. All the announcements were made. They wanted all the wireless phones shut off when the door closed so i complied. lost track of time therefore at 4:51pm since I wear no watch. We pushed pack after a few minutes. Instead of positioning the aircraft on the runway and stopping and then taking off, our takeoff roll really began on the taxiway and the pilot accelerated through the turn on to 31R and then proceded to take off like a rocket. We were quickly high up in the air. I saw many familiar places in the Des Moines area, most importantly my parent's house. I tracked our position until we went over some thick low clouds. It was getting really dark at that moment anyway. The FAs served drinks and bags of pretzels. There were four FAs on each flight. It was cloudy all the rest of the way to MDW. We came in through the clouds and did some turning so i lost my sense of direction. The clouds had lots of snowflakes in them! We ended up landing on one of the 31 runways at MDW. I turned my phone on shortly after touching down (even though the doors weren't open). i called my brother-in-law to tell him that we just landed. it was 5:50 then. But he told me that our gate was still occupied by a delayed America West jet. The pilot told us this shortly after I found out from my brother-in-law. So we had to wait on the taxiway before getting to our gate in the B terminal.

(this is to be continued. It's getting late!)

Nice one. Hope to hear the second part soon....

Alvin

part II of II:

The Flights (continued)

......At first we were told that it would be a short 10-15 minute delay, but then the captain came on and said that it would be even longer because he could
see that the America West airplane was being de-iced. He made it clear that he didn't understand why de-icing was necessary, but ended that statement with "...well, it's none of my business." So it was about 6:20 when we were finally stopped at the gate after waiting on the ground for about 25 minutes. I didn't care too much about the delay. I'd gladly wait an extra 15 minutes again if it meant that an airplane wouldn't be at even a slight risk of falling out of the sky. After they figured out how to operate the jet bridge, I deplaned and that was the end of that flight.

Sunday: Took the Orange line train to Midway and got there right around 6:00pm. It is a long walk from the train station to the terminal. You have to walk through the parking garage and through the new terminal that is under construction. We had to walk outside for a short part of the walk at the end and it was snowing heavily when we did this. Access Air's check in was at Frontier's counter. Checked in and got my boarding assignment, 44. Went to the gate. The gate agents were also from Frontier. They began boarding by number in blocks of 10. I got on the plane and was seated with my stuff put away at 6:25pm. I was in
18F. There was snow on my window so I couldn't see out it too well at the gate. It had stopped snowing though. The snow hadn't accumulated any on the ground and was slowly melting off my window. At 6:30 they started the announcements. At 6:30 they told us that we'd have to wait to be de-iced. They re-announced the delay at 6:40 they also said the flight time was computed at 50 minutes. At 6:50 they started the de-icing and I turned off my phone after this so I lost track of time. We took off toward the southeast on 13R I think. We flew through the clouds for a while so it was a little bumpy. We finally broke through and it was a short smooth flight to Des Moines. There was drink service but no pretzels   . While descending to land on 31R it was pretty bouncy. I think there was a strong wind out of the west. Landing was reasonably smooth though.
After touchdown I turned my phone back on. It was about 8:10. I was in a hurry to get off the plane so I didn't look at the time again. We taxied to the
gate and after most of the people up front got off the plane I deplaned. That was it.

Conclusions

Well I had two good flights with the recently restarted Access Air. I got a good price, $74 for the round trip. I give Access Air a B+. In general good service. During my weekend in Chicago I met Turbotristar, Big777jet, and Twa902fly at ORD. Had a good time spotting. That's about all. Feel free to post questions or comments.

mls515

Hi! Excellent trip report! I am glad Access is getting back on there feet. Two questions, one, how were the loads? Two, if they are codesharing with ATA, why arent they operating out of ATA's gatespace and ticket counters? Thanks!
-Tony

Very good report, Mls515! I had a great time at ORD with all of you guys. I posted a report on my vacation up there too, check it out if you want!

TurboTristar

hey great report, i just got back from SJC about 5 hours ago

-TWA902fly

The loads were about two thirds or so. That's my best guess. And that's a good question, about the gate thing. Don't know.

Hey Mls515:

Great report! The runways you probably used at MDW were 31C and 13C, as it's the only runway in that direction capable of handling a 737-sized aircraft. As for the gate thing, they use B9 because America West does the ground handling and that is their gate. That also explains why you got delayed by the AmWest CRJ. Another reason for the gate usage is that ATA's gates are usually full as they have a lot of flights out of only 7 gates. If AccessAir stays around long enough to use the new MDW terminal, they might be positioned somewhere closer to ATA.

Thanks for the info!