FLIGHT 3:
December 28th, 2014
United 1510 / UA1510
IAH-LIR
Boeing 737-800
Status: COMPLETED
After disembarking from UA320, on a A319 ( ), I got the gate information for the next flight, which involved transferring terminals, to United's Terminal E. Now that I think about it, basically every terminal at IAH is United's.
I hopped onto IAH's people mover system, which shuttles passengers between Terminals A, B, C and D/E/International Arrivals, and it was quick, 45 second trip to the next station.
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Behind some weird lady going to the people mover
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Rainy IAH.
After discovering that E16, the gate for UA1510, was one of the farthest away from the station, and after a few grumbles about Houston and its Republican-named airports and its largeness like Republican egos, I proceeded to the nearest Food Court to grab something to eat. Seeing that the Panda Express-esque thing was staffed by Middle Easterners, therefore not Asian, I grabbed a Ham and Swiss sandwish from the nearest Fresh Express store, and went off to E16.
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Travelling through IAH involved a lot of standing.
When I got to E16, it was full of people, yet empty of staff, and a plane. Since the weather was so crappy, and too many people in the terminal, I decided not to spot and save that for my return trip, and instead eat. While eating, I observed that 95% of the people at the gate were fat tourists. Great, now I had to sit next to a fat tourist.
Finally, with 40 minutes left, our plane arrived from Baltimore, and as in Phoenix, people rush off to make connections, and the cleaning crew rushes on to remove any trash, lest the plane be found in Liberia with agriculture on board. 15 minutes later, we begin boarding, first with Group 1, then Group 2, then 3, 4, 5. Arriving at my seat, 15A, I was pleased to find that the plane had seat-back screens, with DirecTV being featured. Settling down into the seat, which was about 1000000000 times more better than the A319, I watched an episode of Blue Bloods with the plane on the ground. Wait, an hour episode?
We were delayed for quite a while due to people missing connections and missing baggage, which would impact our already late arrival into Liberia. With people mumbling and grumbling, the last stragglers from Denver climbed aboard, and we pushed back from E16, an hour or so late.
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Blue Bloods
I was happy to see that the middle seat between my dad and I in Economy Plus was empty, so the legroom itself felt like First Class, just not the seat.
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Legroom Bliss.
We taxied for a while, stuck behind a multitude of Jungle Jets [E145's], and eventually made our way to some runway in the middle of nowhere, where we began our takeoff roll.
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Still raining in Houston D:
Our turbulent departure from Houston concluded with reaching our crusing altitude at FL330, with nothing but blue to be seen for miles, and then of course a layer of white, which ruined the scene.
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Departure through clouds.
A little while later, my DirecTV preview ran out, and I needed to buy it in order to finish. Annoyed, I shut off the screen and started doing what I do on most flights: reading magazines, binge-listening to some artists [this flight, Carrie Underwood, Christina Perri, and the Vamps], and deciding what I want to do in life. And of course, all of this was complemented by two cans of Seagram's Ginger Ale, muh fave <3
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My setup.
Nothing really interesting happened on this flight, it was mostly just watching out the window at what I could see of the sunset. I tried some long exposures of the beacon reflection on the engine, and of the winglet, and they sorta worked, but I'll post later.
The flight seemed to be going OK, which annoyed me, because there's usually something wrong with United. Finally, they announced it. The bag of forms that they had been given, which was a tote bag with a big-ass label on it called "COSTA RICA" had only 25 immigration forms for the 150 or so of us on the flight. The rest would be given to us at the gate. Customs forms were handed out, and I slowly filled one out, not wanting to mess up anything, since I did not feel like being interrogated tonight in Spanish [as I barely speak any in the first place].
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Customs Form
Our descent into Liberia happened around 7:45pm, and we were instructed to turn off everything, everything, like in the olden days, including my camera. Therefore, I didn't take any photos of this phase of the flight or then on. Our approach took us over a river and a forest, before coming to land on runway . It was a short taxi to the gate, but when we were taxiing in, I saw something that made me jump a bit: a mob of teenagers were to be the Ground Service employees serving our flight tonight. There were three of them with the light thingies directing us in, and another 15 or so standing at the end of the stand, some with baggage trucks ready, others ready to plug random stuff into the plane.
We disembarked without further worry, and proceeded to Immigration, where walls and floors were full of people from our flight filling out Immigration forms. The border guards were peering over their computer stations, with expressions just shouting, "dafak".
So that's all. I hope that you all enjoyed the second part of my trip, and I will be posting sometime next week with the conclusion: back to Chicago.
NEXT: PHOENIX SPOTTINGZ