My flights from San Antonio back home represented a lot of firsts for me once again. Like my outbound flights, I’d once again be on a mix of American and American Eagle. And for my first flight from San Antonio, I found myself on an American Eagle CRJ900.
My flight from Los Angeles to San Antonio was my very first time on American Eagle and a commuter airline in general. That flight was operated by Compass Air, which was the first time I flew that airline too.
More Firsts
My flight out of San Antonio was another set of firsts for me. This flight represented my first flight on a Bombardier Jet, a CRJ900, to be exact. It was also my very first flight on Mesa Airlines too, believe it or not. And that’s because Mesa Air was the evil airline that essentially killed Aloha Airlines with super cheap flights on their awful CRJ200s within Hawaii.
Check-In
Like my outbound flight, I had to use two different terminals in San Antonio. American’s check-in counter is located in Terminal B, while my gate was located in Terminal A. The check-in kiosks were, well, the standard type used by American, but the crowd control sucks. People didn’t seem to understand where the lines form, so people kept trying to cut. Either that or they were literally just trying to cut. Thankfully the agents were good at keeping order at the kiosks.
While I checked in the day before, I still had to print my bag tag, so I had to wait. There aren’t a lot of kiosks, so the wait can be a bit long. My bag ended up being slightly overweight too, but the agents didn’t care. They simply tagged my bag and sent it off! From there, I headed to the TSA checkpoint, which had minimal waits, and then to my gate at the very end of Terminal A. That was a bit of a walk, so be sure to give yourself sufficient time if flying American Eagle out of SAT.
Boarding
American’s CRJ900s are configured with between 74 and 79 seats. Boarding was scheduled at 7:55 am with 8 boarding groups. For 70-something passengers. That kind of seems like overkill, and the gate agents thankfully thought the same. Boarding began at 7:53 am, and while they did pre-boarding and first class separately, they boarded groups 3 and 4 at the same time. Likely because there were so few passengers in each of those groups.
However, because of the aircraft’s small size, the overhead bins can’t accommodate standard-size carry-on bags. So anyone with a roller board or spinner-style carry-on had to gate check their bags. This was free of charge but still not ideal. Luckily, I only had my backpack, so this was a non-issue for me.
The weather that day was pretty awful, with large storm cells rolling in and a chance of tornadoes. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining when I boarded the aircraft, as the jet bridge canopy wasn’t extended towards the aircraft. The entire ramp from the jet bridge into the aircraft was exposed to the elements, which didn’t really make a lot of sense… But whatever.
Nevertheless, thanks to the aircraft’s small size and lack of carry-on bags, boarding finished fairly quickly. And by 8:12 am, just 19 minutes after the pre-boarding call, the flight attendants secured the door.
Aircraft Interior
Thanks to first class and preferred seating taking up most of the aircraft, I was seated in the back half.
The 2+2 layout was a bit tight, with minimal legroom and tiny seat widths. Unfortunately, the emergency exit cover and some interior panels were also loose, which caused a lot of rattling throughout the flight. And because I’m stupid, I forgot to check SeatGuru when selecting my seat, so I had a misaligned window. My only window was near the seat-back of the seat in front of me, so I had to lean way forward to look out.
American Eagle Flight 5844
Because of the quick loading, we began our pushback 9 minutes ahead of schedule at 8:16 am. The pilots seemed eager to get off the ground, and I don’t blame them. There was terrible weather approaching, and our flight plan reflected the need to get around that cell.
After a short taxi, we were immediately cleared for takeoff and began our roll at 8:23 am.
Our initial climb out was a little steep and fairly bumpy. But things smoothed out as we broke out over the weather.
Despite the weather, our flight time was quoted as being a little over 2 hours. Service was limited to basically just beverages, which was fine. The flight attendants working our flight were friendly and efficient, which pleasantly surprised me.
What really sucked, though, was the seeming lack of insulation in the lower half of the aircraft. The higher we climbed, the colder my feet got. My feet got so cold that they began to hurt, and I was wearing dress shoes! I don’t think this is supposed to happen. I ended up spending most of the flight desperately trying to keep my feet as high up as I could, but to no avail. My feet were incredibly painful by the time I finally got off this flying tin can.
Mercifully, we made good time and, in no time, were descending into Phoenix.
We landed at 8:40 am, 2 hours and 14 minutes after departing SAT.
Thanks to ground traffic, we had a long taxi to the gate with a lot of holds. We finally arrived at our gate at 9:04 am, almost 10-minutes behind our scheduled 8:55 am arrival time.
American Eagle CRJ900 SAT-PHX Final Thoughts
My second-ever American Eagle flight was pretty uneventful. Actually, as far as service goes, this flight was pretty good. The flight attendants were genuinely friendly, and unlike those on my first AE flight, they seemed to enjoy doing what they do. The aircraft, on the other hand… a piece of crap! It’s so cramped inside, and I still have no idea why my feet got so cold. I wasn’t the only one either, as I heard the woman seated in front of me complaining about the same issue. I tweeted American and Mesa Air about it, but they never responded. Oh well. Suffice to say, I’ll avoid CRJ aircraft like the plague in the future. This aircraft made what would have been a pleasant flight into a somewhat bad one. Then again, I’ll be avoiding flights on American and American Eagle as much as possible anyway.