AA1876 Flight Report : Charlotte - Toronto
Aug 16, 2024
My next leg for this summer transatlantic journey continued a day after arriving from London. After a relaxing night in Charlotte and a little sightseeing, I was ready to return to the airport for a much shorter beg to backtrack my way to Toronto.I received a few emails that my flight would be delayed that morning for my 1:04pm flight. The first email arrived at 9:31am with a revised departure time of 1:28pm. 7 minutes later, another email arrived and the departure turned to 2:23pm. A further separate email came with the delay's reason - "aircraft maintenance or repair". It was nice that they pro-actively informed me well ahead of the check-in starting time so I wouldn't be stuck at the airport with nothing else to do. As a result, I bumped my hotel check-out by an hour and had a little more time to sightsee and relax in my room. At 11:45am, I set off to catch the half-hourly Sprinter #5 bus. Charlotte's airport is actually quite close to Uptown, its city centre. The Sprinter bus costs only $2.2 a ride, and you can buy a ticket with Google Pay on their app beforehand. After less than half an hour, I reached the arrivals level once again. Heading upstairs, I noted the terminal looked quite new and a world different than the dingy and smelly immigration hall that greeted me yesterday. Similar to London, the 2-step process is clearly marked and I headed for the kiosk to get my bag tag. However, it spat out an error, so staff directed me to the special services counter around the corner of construction. I was told these machines often hiccup when they encounter a non-American passport. I was the next customer to be served in the manual line and got a boarding pass and the bag tagged quickly. She confirmed the delay was still in place and verified the new gate for me. With some time on hand, I was curious to explore what the new terminal would look like. The check-in hall is partially barricaded under construction so I headed upstairs to see if I can get a wider view. Here, I noticed a few pedestrian bridges to the parking garage next door. There is also construction happening here with a curb-side pick-up area being rebuilt and a huge canopy above us to protect against the elements. I could also see the city's skyline in the distance.
Returning back to the terminal, I monitored the security lines on the website and decided to use checkpoint 1 security, which seems to always show a much faster journey. This part of the terminal serves non-AA airlines, and given Charlotte is a dominant AA hub, maybe that's why this section is quieter. Security was quick and I emerged air-side in no time. It was quite crowded but at least there are plenty of shops and restaurants around. You won't go hungry here. The airport is divided into various piers which are assigned letters. I had a lot of time left so I walked around the different piers. The food areas were not too packed but the gates were very busy with insufficient seating areas to manage the many narrowbody flights. With low ceilings and narrow corridors, it felt quite claustrophobic here and the Friday lunch-time rush didn't help. I thought Charlotte was a relatively small city but post-research revealed its airport was even busier than Newark in 2023! Arriving at my gate at the end of the C pier, there was an announcement that the aircraft was being sent from the maintenance area and should arrive by 2pm. However, that didn't materialize and at 2:01pm, I got yet another email about the departure time pushing to 2:50pm. 15 minutes later, they sent us to another gate on the other side of the pier. Our original departure time was 1:04pm. Spotting is a bit boring here with almost 100% American planes.
The boards show flights in destination alphabetical order and not by departure time, a bit unique compared to the rest of the world.
Should I try some airport sushi? Could it be more reliable than supermarket or gas station sushi?
At the end of the D pier, the windows opened up nicely and I could get another grand view of Charlotte's skyline with a plane in front.
Navigating past the neighbouring gates' crowds, I wonder why US airports can't separate incoming and arriving traffic to different levels to reduce the crowding, especially since aircraft are turned around quickly so the next set of passengers would likely be waiting at the gate already to greet the inbound folks, making it even more crowded. There was a plane parked at the new gate, C2, and passengers were coming off the plane. It seems the original plane is still stuck in maintenance and they swapped us a new one instead. With people just disembarking now and the revised departure time being just a little over half an hour later, I doubted we would make it and sure enough, at 2:21pm, the departure got moved yet again to 3:05pm, a full 2 hours late.
By now, I didn't have much energy left to roam around looking for food or to explore anymore. Lucky I had a muffin to snack on earlier. With only a backpack and my hand carry checked in, it was a fairly seamless boarding although I heard announcements that they've run out of overhead space across many gates by the time the final groups were due to board, and that was also the case for my flight.
Today's flight is operated by an A319 and was not full. The middle seat next to me was empty and there was wifi entertainment on board. The announcements remarked our original plane is still broken so they swapped us to this one, and the flight time would be under 1.5 hours. We were all boarded by 3:04pm and pushed by 8 minutes later, heading on a long taxi to take off towards the south at 3:36pm.
With a right window, I had anticipated to see the skyline well when we looped around after take-off. However, we made a wide loop and stayed quite west of the city so I struggled to locate Uptown, even though the airport was much easier to spot and very visible. Clouds rolled in not too long afterwards so I turned to the wifi for some entertainment.
The IFE system available on the wifi had more than enough selection for the short flight, but seems to have less available than the long-haul flight across the Atlantic yesterday. Nevertheless, I had a lot of Big Bang Theory to choose from. The flight pass for connectivity was a bit expensive given the duration but I like the annual version if you intend to fly American a lot.
The crew came around with biscuits and a free drink and the flight passed by uneventfully. There were some breaks in the clouds as we started our descent and I could see the Welland Canal and its Lake Ontario exit.
Soon, we turned and passed next to downtown Toronto, but there were some clouds in the way. We looped and then headed west to land, touching down at 5:01pm and reaching a stop 10 minutes later. The crew took advantage and actively sold their new credit card with a big mileage bonus enough to redeem a good set of longer flights and no check-in baggage fees.
Vaughan's new highrise city centre is taking shape in the top left.
Our arrival gate at Terminal 3 was just a short walk to the immigration kiosks.
I have flown American out of Toronto previously, which have mostly been on small regional jets like the ones to the right.
Despite being at the back of the plane, I didn't need to wait for an immigration kiosk. However, similar to my last visit to Terminal 3, the kiosks don't flow naturally to the next step, the line to an immigration officer. I had to look for it, and it wasn't well signposted. As this problem had existed before, I can only point to management incompetence amidst confused passengers trying to find their way around. I was happy though to see a staff directing citizens to a side exit without needing to line up to see an immigration officer. Reaching the baggage belt relatively quickly, I was delighted to re-unite with my bag shortly after 5:30pm but here is where the trouble started. There was a huge traffic jam to exit despite several agents at the end collecting our kiosk paperwork. After getting through that mess, it was another slow walk to the actual exit, which involved a 90-degree turn right at the end to go through a set of thin doors on the side. Obviously, with such high traffic, bottlenecks emerged here as well when frantic passengers had to manage their heavy carts around the obstacle course.
In recent years, I've had some awful experiences using Terminal 3, and today's was probably the worst. After passing the crowds and venturing upstairs for the train to Terminal 1, I finally got some peace and quiet.
Final Thoughts
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