Phoenix Sky Harbor

The flight to Philadelphia departed from gate A22. Therefore I walked over to the US Airways Club located next to gate A 21, which is quite small and was very packed, but nevertheless I had no problem to find an empty table with two chairs.

Boarding was announced to start at 08:20 which gave me round about 25 minutes, but usually I leave earlier. Nevertheless, enough time for a coffee and a bagel. At 08:15 I left the lounge and walked over to the gate where boarding had already started ahead of schedule.
This was not the first time and US Airways is quite good in speeding up things and if the plane is ready they board, even if it is ahead of official boarding time. So I joined the line of elite passengers boarding the aircraft.

27 June 2013
PHX – PHL
[Phoenix Sky Harbor – Philadelphia International]
US 714 (US Airways); Boeing 757 (N203UW)
Gate A 22
08:50 – 16:32 [effective 08:49 – 16:57]
First Class
Seat 2 F

I boarded the aircraft and turned left towards the small First Class cabin equipped with three rows with First Cass seats in a 2-2- configuration. These are the old international First Class seats with a large seat pitch which are fully electronically operated and quite comfortable. These planes are also used on international flights and then the First Class seats are sold as Envoy seats. The seat offer a very generous seat pitch of 60 inch and a seat width of 19.5 inch, while in Economy the seat pitch is only 32 inch and the seat width 17 inch.

Unfortunately the overhead bins are smaller than on newer jets and so I had to take a larger item out of the front pocket of my Samsonite trolley, otherwise it would not fit into the overhead compartment. As soon as I had stored it and taken my window seat in the second row, I was asked if I like to have a pre departure drink. Of course – and a glass of orange juice was brought soon later to my seat. A few passengers in the First Class Cabin had already boarded the plane, but five seats were still not taken and the remaining passenger in the First Class Cabin boarded in the next couple of minutes and it was another fully booked First Class Cabin. Despite the 757 being an old plane, I like the fact that the plane is usually boarded via the second door and this makes the front section much more quite during boarding.

As boarding was completed, the captain told us, that our departure time was 09:25 and he hoped to get it shifted to an earlier time. There was also luggage from passengers with tighter connection to be loaded into our aircraft. We pushed back on time at 08:49 and taxied to the runway. The safety video was shown on the tube screen mounted above the aisle first in English language and then in Spanish language during push back and on our way to the runway. There was a long line of planes queuing for take-off and during our wait the captain informed us, that the departure slot was still the same which means we would might be delayed in Philadelphia as the weather forecast was not give us much chance to safe some time in the air, au contraire we had to fly a detour due to some nasty thunderstorms on our way.

While we waited in line for our take off and taxied along the cargo area of PHX, I might give some information about our Boeing 757 for today’s flight to the city of brotherly love, aka Philadelphia.

Our Boeing 757-23N (WL), which already shows, that these plane was not bought by US Airways or America West, as the “3N” is the Boeing customer code and stand for American Trans Air. And indeed our Boeing 757 is a 200 version delivered to American Trans Air on June 16, 2000 with the registration N525AT. It is equipped with two Rolls Royce RB211-535E4 engines offering a thrust of 40100 lbf or 178 kN. It is worth to note, that these engines were also available for the Tupolew TU-204-120 and the first time a Western engine was used for an Eastern aircraft. After American Trans Air or later ATA ceased operations the plane came to the French Air Horizons and registered with the French registration F-GRNG. But since these airline filed for bankruptcy protection shortly after they have leased the aircraft from SP Aircraft Owner III LLC it was returned and joined the fleet of US Airways on February 23, 2006 with registration N642UW. It was equipped with winglets shortly after and re-registered with N203UW. It has the ETOPS certification and is also used for transatlantic flights, especially on the PHL – AMS, PHL – BRU or CLT – DUB flights.

Now, we finally have reached the top of the queue and at 09:22 the captain powered the Rolls Royce engines and we accelerated on runway 07L and climbed into the sky. During our take off I counted no less than 17 planes behind us – quite a busy morning at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport.

During our climb the captain came once again over the microphone and mentioned the flight time with 4 hours and 17 minutes which was longer than scheduled due to a route further south than the planed one as he already indicated in his welcome speech. In Philadelphia rain and a cloudy sky were most likely awaiting us. He mentioned the seat belt signs would be further turned on as he was expecting some turbulence during our climb to reach our cruising altitude of 37,000 feet.

The crew began to start the service and first we were asked for our choice of beverage. I opted for a glass of tonic water which was soon brought by the flight attendant and heated the breakfast in the front galley. One could smell the food and I was slightly becoming hungry, although airline food is not always something to look forward to. The choice on today’s flight was an omelet or a cheese spits.

I choose the omelet which was filled with cheese and served with potatoes and a meat roll, fruit, a roll and jam and butter. Though the presentation was average, the food tasted quite good for airline food. In general, I have been lucky in the fast if it comes to airline food in US First Class. It certainly helps to lower the expectations, but the food was eatable on most of my flights.

The trays were collected after an hour in flight. The flight attendant offered a few times refills of water or coffee while passing through the cabin. Wine or alcoholic beverages were available on request but given the early hours, I only went with soft drinks or coffee.

During the flight, the front galley was blocked as the flight deck went for the lavatories and got a coffee. In this time all passenger were asked to return to their seats, not only First Class but also Economy Class.

With the exception of the first couple of minutes after we had left Phoenix, the flight was smooth but after two hours we passed an area with light turbulence and the seat belt signs were switched on and it was indeed a bit bumpier. I used this longer flight to write to answer some e-mails, continued in writing this report and some other reports I had in the pipeline. The seats offered only an EmPower outlet but my laptop battery was charged and there was no need for additional power supply. There was no inflight entertainment on this flight as US Airways had decided to remove the inseat monitors in First / Envoy.

The last hour of the flight was very bumpy and the seat belt sign were turned on for close to 35 minutes. I was certainly nothing to worry about, but if you had a full glass it would have probably swapped over. I covered my glass of wine with a napkin, just to be on the safe side, especially as I was using a laptop. Later the flight became smoother again and the captain turned off the seat belt signs but announced to turn in on soon as we were approaching Philadelphia International Airport.

We were not able to reduce our delay during our flight, especially as we had to approach Philadelphia via the coast of Virginia due to turbulence in combination with a thunderstorm. And our approach into Philadelphia was still very bumpy.

We approached Philadelphia from Western direction and touched down on runway 27R at 16:48 and taxied for our gate.

We in First Class  had to wait until the passengers from the first rows of Economy had left but it did not took a long time and we could enter the jetbridge and walked towards the terminal and the pick up location for the hotel shuttles.

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