Flight: United Express #7112 AUS to IAD

Departing From: Austin, Texas (AUS)
Traveling To: Washington Dulles (IAD)
ETD: 4:10 PM CST (Actual 5:45 PM CST)
ETA: 8:30 PM EST (Actual 10:15 PM EST)
Est. Duration: 3 h 20 m (Act. Duration: 4 hr 10 min)
Departure Gate: 21 (actual 23)
Arrival Gate: Concourse "G"
Seat: 15D
Equipment: CRJ700
Miles: 1294
Other:


Actual time leaving around 5:45 pm CST. Extremely hot geetting onto the plane because it had been sitting in the Austin sun during the delay. Completely full, everyone coming back from the same trade show at the same time.

Other than the huge delay based on local weather at Dulles, the usual CRJ experience. Quite a bit turbulent this flight as we cross storm fronts all along the country. Summertime is a lousy time to fly because of storms. Wintertime is pretty bad too because of snow. I wonder what flying is like on other planets?

Well, let's discuss "Concourse G" for a little bit.

For those that use Dulles International Airport, you may have heard of the new airline Independence Air. This new airline was started earlier this year as fallout between the regional airline Atlantic Coast and United Airlines. Atlantic Coast served as the United Express regional carrier out of Dulles. The two of them had a contract dispute, and the fallout is that Atlantic Coast decided to start their own airline as a new entity Independence Air, and United decided to replace Atlantic Coast with their own flights. If you need more information on this dispute check elsewhere (Washington Post had a number of articles on this, but you'll have to pay for their content).

After all this, Dulles now has a bunch of new commuter flights as United tries to keep their schedule and Independence adds their service. Lots more CRJ's in and out of Dulles, more competition, all of which is good for travelers in the DC area.

The bad news is that all this happens in the midst of major construction at Dulles, which has rapidly moved from curious to inconvenient to annoying. Dulles is building a subway system to replace their "moon buses", they are dealing with the security related terminal changes that the original architect couldn't anticipate for life in 2004, and they have relocated commuter flights from close to the main terminal to out in the mid-field terminals. This flight introduced me to "Concourse G", which United Express is running.

Concourse G can best be described as a large rectangle out past the last concourse in an area so remote that it's past the construction equipment storage area. It's design seems to be a late-60's era storage depot. This hastily constructed building was obviously slapped together to deal with the sudden need for more gates for small planes, and feels just a little more permanent than a tool shed. Ground control mustn't be able to see out this far because our plane had to taxi back out to the runway after being directed head on to another plane in motion (planes can't go in reverse, and pilots seem to get annoyed when faced with this situation).

Once our plane stopped we had a long walk into the concourse which seemed to be designed to hold around 500 passengers and was currently occupied by about 800. Arriving passengers are diverted to the right, where we found out they weren't sending buses out to this concourse quickly enough to return passengers. After a crowded wait, a shuttle bus (a new kind - not a moon bus) pulled up to drive us to the main terminal.

Normally, the moon buses move between the main terminal and the midfield terminals passing under a bridge in the middle of the concourse A-B structure. This new bus must not be allowed to go through the middle path the larger moon buses run, so we had to drive around all the end concourses, stopping frequently at crossing paths. After this 15 minute drive we were dumped out at the main terminal at the bottom of what seemed to be fire exit stairs. We then had to climb two flights of stairs in to a new passenger receiving area, then down an escalator into a construction zone, then up an escalator to another hidden lounge, then down an escalator as we dealt with this temporary route to baggage claim caused by the subway construction.

One bright spot -- it took so long to get to baggage claim that all our luggage was there by the time we showed up.

This whole adventure wasn't so bad for me, since I was home. Others had missed connecting flights, so there was a lot of tension in the air while waiting for the shuttle bus to the main terminal.

Summary: the flight was about an hour and a half late leaving due to weather, then it took about an hour between landing and getting to baggage claim for all the other reasons.

It's possible that a lot of this was due to Concourse G being new, as I can't believe that shuttle bus was really supposed to drop us off at that bottom of all those stairs in the main terminal (seemed like a security risk too, since we could have bolted across the grounds instead of climbing the stairs). The walk to baggage claim is kind of amusing in its complexity, and lack of signs informing you if you are moving the right way makes this process silly (one little "pardon the inconvenience" sign as you exit to baggage claim made everyone laugh). My advice right now is that United Express at Dulles is probably best avoided for a while until operations gets used to the new building or the subway system becomes operational. How long is a "while" is the remaining question.

One last comment concerns the placement of "commuter flight" gates. One of the great things about Dulles used to be the "commuter" flights were located right next to the main terminal, removing the need to get on the big moon buses. This made it very quick to get in and out on those short flights. Placing commuter flights way out in the mid-field concourse kind of kills your ability to get in and out quickly -- the "express" in United Express is just a catchy slogan at this point. It's not a physically exhausting to get to them, like BWI where they make you walk to gate "D97" to catch a short flight to Norfolk, but it is as inconvenient.