On-ward to San Francisco

Monday, March 19, 2012

Jacksonville, Atlanta, San Francisco

We woke up at Red Roof Inn in the morning and got ready by 5:10 AM and checked out of the hotel.

We dropped off the key cards at the front desk and drove toward the Economy Parking Lot Number 1 via Airport Road. We took the token for parking and and within 5 minutes we got a shuttle and got off at the second stop for AirTran and SouthWest at 5:25 AM.

The baggage checking-in was quick since there were not many people waiting and I had already paid for them $18 ($20/bag but they gave me $6 credit since I paid seat fees).  This took about 15 minutes and by the time we got into the gate area C it was almost 6:10 AM and they were already boarding and so got into the plane. We took off bit early at 6:30 AM from gate C6. Due to the early departure we arrived in Atlanta also 10 minutes early by 7:35 AM at D9 gate. So far I am impressed with Air Tran schedule and staff.

We took the train and there was a line for the escalator to go up to the concourse C (may be because it was Monday morning in ATL and it was 7:50 AM peak hour commute). Our gate was C21 and was next to the escalator and we didn’t have time to grab breakfast as AirTran started to board by 8:20 AM. We were airborne by 8:45 AM few minutes ahead of schedule. But the captain warned us that there was a rainstorm that they were trying to avoid and so we will go via Mobile and that would add few minutes delay to our trip. So getting off early was good.

Once we were airborne and climbed to 10,000 feet I opened my MacBook and found out the Gogoair.com onboard wi-fi service was only $4.95 for my 5 ½ h flight and so I bought the service. This allowed me to see where we were going in real time.