Spring Break '07...nothing special, just went home Pt. 1

[screaming_emu]

sweet, its my old work!

[JSchraub]

Actually out of all the airbus family I like it the best..

[Bok269]

Nice shots. Am I the only one who thinks the A330 is an ugly looking bird?

[JSchraub]

Cool shots man

[pilotgolfer]

Well I guess the title says it all. I bought my ticket home back in January and I was really looking forward to this because it splits my semester evenly and I don't have to go 4 straight months like I did in the fall. That was harsh.
Anyways, it all started friday night, March 9, when we played Minnesota State-Mankato in hockey again. No big fights this time like there was back when we played them back in February.

After that, me and my friend drove down through the night to Minneapolis. My friend was the one that drove. We left Grand Forks about 11pm and finally made it to MSP about 430am with a stop in Fargo and near St. Cloud. I only managed about an hour and a half of sleep on the trip, and I think that wasn't enough for me to make it through all saturday, the 10th. Well after we parked the car and caught the bus to the Lindbergh terminal. I checked in with AA and my friend with NW. It took me about 30 minutes to get through security because at checkpoint 1, they only had one line open. It wasn't until I stood in line for about 20 minutes when they finally opened the other 2. I was pretty close to falling asleep just standing in that line. Anyways, one of our friends took the 5am GFK-MSP flight so we met him at his gate about 620am when his plane came in. Well my first friend's flight was at 7am, so we just went to his gate and he went on his way to DTW and BUF. So after he got on his flight, me and my other friend went to the observation deck above terminal D for a while. This was about the time the sky was beginning to light up.
This is looking at the busy E concourse.

So after a little while, the sun finally decided to show itself on the other side while a SAAB was taxiing by the empty C concourse. This scene would change greatly within a couple hours.
Before...

...and after.

Me and my friend that came in that morning were getting kinda hungry, so we went down to the bakery place that looks toward the E concourse and got some breakfast. We just wandered around after that and came upon N811NW which was waiting to operate her flight to HNL later that day. I must say she is beautiful, and it was my first time to see an A330 this close, but it's still sad knowing that she replaced the DC-10s only a couple months prior.

After that, we went over to his gate in F and waited for them to board to LAX. He was connecting from there onto Santa Barbara to see his brother or something like that. So after he got on his plane, a 753, I went back up to the observation deck for a while until about 1015 when i began to wander towards E14 where we would begin boarding about 1040. I was greeted with N581AA. My seat was 28F, which was the row right across from the door. Boarding went fairly smooth for me because I was in group 2 which I was pretty pleased by. The taxi out to 17 went pretty quick because there was really noone ahead of us.
Mall of America being mostly covered up by our engine.

Some northbound traffic somewhere over the plains.

Some cumulus humilus clouds over Oklahoma.

The flight was pretty smooth and I dozed off for about 15-30 minutes, but I don't really remember because I was so tired. Anyways, we pretty much made a straight in approach to 17C at DFW.


We taxiied into our gate at C24 I think and got off the plane. I took the skytrain over to terminal E because I thought one of my friends who lives near DFW was on the NW flight that had just come in. So I ran down there and wandered around to try to catch her, but I learned recently that she had flown in the night before. Oh well. I continued my journey over to terminal D for my flight to AUS. I was surprised because I watched an SY plane in Transavia c/s taxi in, and I have never seen one before. It looks pretty sweet. I had just under an hour to grab some lunch at Fuddrucker's. I wish I didn't spend as long as I did eating because I didn't get any shots of the BA777, LH340, or SY738 at their gates before I boarded.
We were at gate D18. I was in group 4 this time, so I had a little bit. I finally got boarded and sat down in my seat which was 17A for this leg. I like the left side because with just 2 seats instead of 3, it doesn't feel as crowded. I got to watch N181AN, a 752, ease into the gate next to us, D20.
I don't know why exactly, but I really like this shot.

Well we had a fairly quick taxi to 18L and were almost immediately cleared for takeoff in N248AA.
BA, LH, and SY are all in at D.

We leveled off at FL210 for the short 27 minutes flight to AUS with a great view that I have really missed.

Scattered clouds were everwhere. The flight was pretty smooth with a few bumps here and there, but those are pretty much unavoidable in Texas. We made what I call the interstate visual into 17R because we were turning along I-35 during pretty much the whole descent and approach. The landing wasn't too bad.
[photoid=5937257]

Well I'm going to wrap up this part because I have plenty of more pics that I'm going to put up in part 2.