I have a flight from Dulles. I haven’t flown out of Dulles before.

Why Dulles

Normally, when I fly out of Maryland, I use BWI (Baltimore (Bal’Mer)). I know that airport, and in the past, it’s been cheaper than IAD (Dulles) and DCA (National). That seems to have changed though. After looking over prices and fare sheets, Dulles has gotten, cheaper? I won’t say no to that. I also love flying out of airports I haven’t before.

Getting Ready

An easy flight starts with booking. I normally book flights a few moths out, this saves a lot of money. That low fare chart is your friend.

Once I book a flight, I immediately add it to my flight tracker. That way I can keep an eye out for delays. Adding the flights is super easy, I just forward the confirmation email to a special address.

Seeing how I haven’t flown out of this airport before, my next step was to check the airport map. The main things I look for are, checkpoint locations, terminal locations, and how to get to those. In the case of Dulles a few of the terminals are in a different building. The map shows that I can get between them with a train, or a mobile lounge. I know what I’m riding¹.

With all that, let’s jump to when I arrive at Dulles, and when I start writing the rest of this post.

The Airport

With my car parked, and a quick bus ride, I’m at the airport DieHard 2 wasn’t filmed at. I don’t have a bag to check, so it’s off to security.

I recently applied and was approved for TSA PreCheck. Checking my boarding pass shows that sweet little PreCheck stamp, letting me use that checkpoint. I also have CLEAR Plus through my American Express. These will let me slip right through security, and I’m excited to use them for the first time. This combo (or just one of them) would let me show up to the airport later, but this is me, and I love exploring airports, so I still got here stupid early.

As you can see by the photo of a plane, I’m on the other side of security.

PreCheck and CLEAR worked like a dream. I got in the CLEAR line, and within a minute I was at a terminal. A worker had me scan my eyes, then my boarding pass. I was then showed to the front of the PreCheck line, and didn’t have to interact with the TSA agent. I then tossed my suite case and back pack into a bin, as well as my phone and wallet, and walked through a simple metal detector. Then I grabbed my stuff, and headed into the airport. I didn’t have to take my shoes off.

As I said in the last section, I wanted to ride both the train, and mobile lounge. The train is pretty cool. Fully automated, with a window up front. One of the stations did give me a chuckle, as a monitor had a Windows XP Pro screen saver on it.

After a couple rounds on the train, I headed for the mobile lounge. I was hoping to get some cool airplane pics, but the lounge was pretty packed, and I wasn’t near the window. Oh well, I did see some cool planes though.

Going On The Hunt

If you know my five steps to flight, you know that getting food is super important. I checked the map, and headed off for my usual, a good pretzel.

The map showed an Auntie Anne’s in my concourse. A quick walk there showed me the truth, the hard facts, the undeniable reality, that the good pretzel place… wasn’t there. Great. There was a another one in C concourse though.

So, I hopped on the train, and headed to C. Getting off a the station, I found myself in PenFed hell. After that, pretzels.

After ordering and getting my food, I descended back through PenFed hell to the train. My next stop, a drink. I passed a few Hudson Nonstops on my way to C. Those have that weird Amazon “just walk out” POS system, and I wanted to give it a shot.

I had two options to enter the Hudson snack thing. An Amazon One account, or a credit card. Easy choice, the card. After inserting my AMEX, the gate opened, and I was in. Unfortunately, IAD is a Pepsi place… This is not good. I grabbed a doctor pepper², and headed for the exit. True to the saying, I just walked out. As someone who works in loss prevention, that felt wrong.

Gate Time

With the fun out of the way, I went to my gate, and plopped a seat. A perfect time to pull out my Mac, and write this blog post.

As per usual, I pre downloaded some plane crash documentaries to watch. Most of them I’ve seen before, but two of them I haven’t yet.

CHAOS in the cockpit | Gulf Air Flight 072
Shutting down the WRONG engine?? | British Midlands Flight 92

Both are from Green Dot Aviation.

Plane Time

With a scan of my watch, I was on the plane.

My plane isn’t even a year old. FAA signed off on it January 1st of this year. Seeing how its a 737 MAX 8, I hope the doors stay on. Joking aside, the in plane WiFi isn’t working. It’s always something on these newer Boeings.

IAD Thoughts

While IAD has a bunch of cool things (like the mobile lounge, and train), it’s not much past that. Just a few straight, not crazy big buildings. My usual BWI, is a lot more interesting in terms of walking around in some regards.

The drive to IAD was also much less fun than to BWI. I’ll probably continue to fly from IAD, so long as the prices stay good³. I’ll have some more thoughts on IAD when I fly home. Via an odd connection.