First blog post! I’d like to detail how I intend to approach these trip reports before launching into this one. The issues facing me on trip reports are two fold. First, I feel like most follow the same pattern: picture of ticket, picture of wing, picture of menu, complain about FAs, discuss leg room, end. This the boilerplate trip review, while sometimes very helpful, is not the form I want this blog to follow. Second, as I stated in the ‘About’ section, a majority of these flights, for the next few years, are going to be DEN-OMA. How. Boring. I have to figure out some way to make them even a little bit more interesting.

Therefore, I’m going to make these reports as in depth as possible. Disclaimer: these are going to be much more entertaining to an AV Geek than someone just trying to figure what seat is best on the 175 going to OMA. My plan is to include registration numbers (maybe some history on the plane?), runways used, routings taken, weather factors, and any other interesting (to me at least…) details I can think to include.

All of that being said, I thought about almost none of this stuff during my previous flight…therefore I have no pictures, no weather data, no tail number, no routings…basically I don’t have any of the things that I said I wanted to include in a trip report! I know myself, however, and know that if I didn’t just make the blog and put something up on it, I would keep procrastinating and never actually do anything with it. Alright, enough of that, let’s get on to the good stuff: the flight itself!

I’ve been a United (Star Alliance) flyer ever since I really fell in love with travelling about three years ago (future blog post about that one day…). That, coupled with the fact that United consistently has the lowest fares flying in and out of OMA, means I will continue to fly them for the foreseeable future.

I arrived at OMA for my 1730 departure to DEN at about 1530. This may seem excessively early, especially for OMA’s hilariously small TSA screening area, but I am paranoid about being late to anything, but especially flights.

A quick story about this particular security screening. The screening area consists of one line to the right for TSA Pre-Check and two to the left for general passengers (although I have only ever seen the second of the two general lines used once). There is no line for premium or Premier Access members. The process is then the same as anywhere else: belts and shoes off, liquids out, laptops out and in a separate bin. OMA, I believe must be participating in a pilot program because the past few times I have gone through, they have asked people to take any food or snacks out of their bags. I have yet to encounter this at any other airport. A few months ago, they were also having people remove any books from their bags as well, though this process seems to have ceased as of about a month ago.

This particular time, while waiting to have the TSA agent scan my boarding pass and stare repeatedly up and down at my license picture and back at me, I noticed the man standing in front of me at the TSA podium. The first thing I noticed was the excessive amount of baggage he had with him. I noticed one carry-on sized bag, one backpack, several other smaller bags, and a full sized (what appeared to be gel) pillow, pillowcase from home and all. In my travels, I have come to discover that anyone who brings their own pillow from home for a flight is a relatively inexperienced traveler. This proved to be the case today.

After the TSA agent determined that my identity was adequately confirmed, I proceeded in line behind the man with the pillow. We were almost to the part of the process where you should be placing your belongings on the rolly-rack (I’m sure there is a more technical term for this, forgive me), before he realized that he would need to do all of the things we all just do by nature. In a sheer panic, he dropped his carry on bag onto the floor, ran back to where I was, had difficulty taking some bins from the cart, and threw them on the belt. He then hurriedly attempted to comply with all of the TSA regulations (belt, shoes, computers out, etc.). He finally thought he was all done and began rushing towards the front of the line. Problem: his bag was still laying where he threw it, next to my foot. We’ve all been new travelers at some point and I didn’t want to be a jerk to him, so picked it up and handed it to him, asking if it was his. He looked bewildered, took it, and muttered , ‘sorry!’ I told him not to worry about it, we were all going to the same place (the very small, maybe 6 gate terminal). As he was taking his bag from me, the woman behind me had placed her first bin on the metal table and was preparing to place her items into it. In what I can only attain to the sheer panic of being placed into a situation for which he was wholly unprepared, the man saw her bin, apparently assumed it was free for anyone’s use, grabbed it, threw his bag into it, and propelled it towards the x-ray machine.

The woman, understandably surprised by this sudden departure of her bin, yelled to him, “you’re welcome!!” The man, presumably experiencing auditory exclusion from this tremendously stressful event, didn’t acknowledge her, but continued attempting to cram all of his belongings into the x-ray machine. Hilariously, a TSA officer came by and explained to him that he did not need to place his bag into the bin. The officer removed the bag from the bin and took the bin away. I turned to the woman behind me, grinned, and shrugged my shoulders telling her, “I guess you’re not getting your bin back.” She did not appear as amused as I thought the situation to be.

As the man was preparing to go through the body scan, the TSA agent had to remind him to take off his jacket. He rushed to place it back into one of his several bins, before proceeding through the body scan. In a turn of events I think we all could have predicted, the scanner flagged the man in several places and he was taken aside for a full pat down. I never saw the man again after that, but I certainly appreciated the few minutes of entertainment that he provided.

I then proceeded to my gate, B12, where I sat for my favorite activity, plane spotting. I love this particular gate because it has great views of all three major runways at OMA (14L/14R and 18). Fortunately flights were arriving and departing at all three of these runways. I sat down at the enormous glass window facing the airfield, booted up Flightradar 24 and LiveATC (both essential apps, in my opinion, for any aviation enthusiast), and spent the next hour or so tracking flight both arriving and departing OMA. These included an American Eagle ERJ-175 coming from Charlotte, a CRJ-200, several private Learjets, and Alaska Airlines 737-900, two Southwest 737-800s, and a United 737-800 coming from DEN. I was be fortunate to be flying this particular aircraft back to DEN.

As a Premier Silver with United, I am entitled to several perks including Complimentary Premier Upgrades. To those unfamiliar with how CPUs work for Silver member, essentially I can be upgraded to United First within 24 hours of departure if space permits. Rarely will these clear before getting to the gate, for me. If they don’t clear automatically at check-in, I will be placed onto a wait list. If there are United First seats and, essentially, no one purchases a United First seat, the waitlist will be begin to clear. Unless I am taking a flight at strange hours (0600 or 2030) I’m usually about 20^th on this list. Needless to say I haven’t had many upgrades clear. However, I had had decent success getting my CPUs to clear when flying from DEN to OMA on an ERJ-175. I believe I’ve been upgraded on that particular plane three times. Other than that, I have only been upgraded on a 737-800 once. And never out of OMA.

The other perk is the ability to select Economy Plus seating for free at check-in. United Economy Plus doesn’t offer anything other than extra leg room and a seat closer to the front of the plane, but it is a nice perk regardless and I have yet to encounter a flight where Economy Plus was sold out (although my recent flight from SIN-SFO was very close, we got the last two seats). I was able to upgrade from 27F to 11A on this flight. 11C was taken, but there was no one yet in the middle seat.

As a Silver, I have Premier Access and am allowed to board with Group 2. The Group 2 line for this flight was particularly enormous and, not wanting to jostle with people for position, I just waited until the last person was almost though before getting into line. I think the biggest perk for Group 2 is finding space for your carry-on luggage, but, as I only bring a small backpack that can fit under the seat in front of me for the flights, I was not concerned about getting on sooner. I took my seat and checked my app to confirm that no one had taken the middle seat, which they had not. Success. I was fortunate enough to see a Fed-Ex A330 and a UPS A330 land back to back and taxi to the cargo area while we were still sitting at the gate.

After the rest of the passengers had boarded and the doors were closed, we began our pushback and I waited for the inevitable engine start, but it never came…after about 5 minutes of sitting in the alley (there’s currently construction on that side of the airport, so we were not obstructing anyone), the pilot came on and explained that DEN was not allowing flights to land at the moment and we would have to wait a few more minutes before we would be allowed to take off. Wondering what had happened, I opened LiveATC and discovered that traffic was arriving and departing as normal from DEN. There were some thunderstorms in and around DEN, so I believe Denver Center probably pushed back our take-off time due to airspace congestion around the airport due to the storms.

Eventually we received our clearance and engines were started. Our taxi to runway 14R (complete with views of crews offloading cargo from the UPS and Fed-Ex A300s) took mere minutes. We received an immediate take off clearance. Our climb out of OMA was unremarkable, lacking any turbulence or other issues. I have remark on how much I love the 737, always such a smooth rotation and climb. Such a blast to fly.

The flight time between OMA and DEN varies slightly, but usually runs about an hour and ten minutes, just a quick hop. After reaching our cruising altitude, the flight attendants began the service, consisting of the United ‘Savory’ snack mix and a beverage service. Just a side note, not a fan of United’s snack mix, give me simple peanuts any day. I rarely partake in the beverage service on this flight. The hassle and stress (inane things can stress me out if I want them to!) of downing my drink and catching the flight attendant’s eye in time when they are gathering trash is just not worth a drink. Especially one I don’t even need. This time was no different. I did not interact with the flight attendants much on this flight, but they seemed perfectly pleasant.

Most of the flight was unremarkable, until beginning our initial decent. There was a ring of storms surrounding Denver and we had to endure their wrath on our approach. About 15 minutes from touchdown we hit some moderate turbulence that continued, at various levels of severity, until we landed. Honestly, I find some light, continual turbulence soothing, for some reason it lulls me to sleep. The worst part about this weather was that the clouds obscured the ground for quite awhile, making it difficult for me to guess which runway we were coming in for landing.

Eventually we cleared the clouds as we were on a downwind to land runway 35R. Touchdown was beautifully executed and we began our loooong taxi to our gate (not really, but 35R is pretty far out there).

Can we take a brief second to discuss that things that about 75% of the passengers do the second the plane ceases forward movement at the gate: jumping up and rushing to grab their bags out of the overhead bin? I do not understand this. For so many reasons. First, the people at the front of the plane will get off, followed by those behind them, so on and so forth. How soon you rip your seatbelt off, rocket to your feet, and pry those overhead bins doors open like a madman is totally irrelevant to how quickly you get off the plane…second, we’re all just going to get uncomfortably close on the same train to baggage claim and ground transportation…why? This legitimately confounds me. Every. Single. Time. Can we start a campaign? #actlikkeanormalhumanbeingwhentheplanearrivesatthegate. Too long? No, this issue needs awareness and a colossal hashtag is just the way to do it!

Thus ends my first blog post! This turned out to be much longer that I anticipated it would be, especially since I did not take any pictures, nor collect any of the data that I said I would for the trip reports…if you made it this far, thanks for reading! Although I highly doubt anyone has, who would want to read a trip report from OMA-DEN? Only a true AV Geek, and for that, I salute you.

Anyway, I have another flight out to OMA in about a week, so I will try to be more detailed and entertaining in that post! Until then, safe travels!