This week, Detroit has become my de facto base. I didn't even begin my trip in my real base of MSP. I bypassed the land up north entirely by catching a flight directly from LAX to Detroit instead of routing myself through Minneapolis. The downside to this was giving up a company-confirmed seat in the back where I could watch
Minions or take a nap. Nay, I spent about four hours in the jumpseat of a 757, one leg draped over a suitcase and the other wedged between the window and the captain's seat. I found this picture on the internet of the 757 jumpseat, but it doesn't do it justice without the visual of someone dangling awkwardly as if they were skydiving and got caught in a tree. AND to spice it up even more, this particular 757 had TWO jumpseats! Another Delta captain sat in the other one. It was like a clown car with the addition of a juggling bear.
With mountains of snow falling on the east coast and thousands of flight cancelations, many people had been rerouted through other airports such as Detroit, so I was lucky to even get on the plane. I knew it might be a challenge today, so I took the first flight out. This resulted in lots of downtime in the Detroit airport. I will now explain to you why this is not the most desirable situation. If you find yourself changing planes in Detroit, I hope you are going from Delta to Delta. If you have to switch to Southwest or United, or really any airline that's not Delta, you are going to have to exit security, wait for a bus that seems to make its own schedule, take the fifteen-minute bus ride to the other terminal, go back in through security, and see that your plane has departed 30 minutes ago. Now, if you stick with Delta, you might think you're in good shape. The McNamara concourse, as you see here, looks clean and new, but like Minneapolis, someone decided that the best way to design an airport was to stretch it out in one very long line. This picture was taken from the middle of the McNamara concourse and doesn't even show the end of the terminal. It is more than one mile from end to end. Yes, there's a train, but that requires waiting.
There is also a poor man's O'Hare tunnel that connects the Delta McNamara concourse with the regional concourse, but this too is laid out in a straight line. Basically what I'm trying to say is that it is not a very efficient airport. The 757 dropped me off at the far end of McNamara and I wanted to get lunch at Potbelly's (one positive about the Detroit airport). It took me (and this is not an exaggeration) over twenty minutes of continuous walking to get there. The real point that needs to be driven home is that if I'm a Delta pilot and I have 45 minutes before my next flight, I am cutting it close if I want to eat Potbelly's. The ease of acquiring food is super important to me, and a reason why I'm not a huge fan of Minneapolis either. I am quickly tiring of Quizno's, the only quick option available to me there. One former ground school classmate and fellow pilot said it best today, "The major difference between a pilot and a jet engine is that the jet engine stops whining once it reaches the gate."
Here we see the elusive Potbelly's as viewed from the aircraft. A rare sight, indeed.
There is also a poor man's O'Hare tunnel that connects the Delta McNamara concourse with the regional concourse, but this too is laid out in a straight line. Basically what I'm trying to say is that it is not a very efficient airport. The 757 dropped me off at the far end of McNamara and I wanted to get lunch at Potbelly's (one positive about the Detroit airport). It took me (and this is not an exaggeration) over twenty minutes of continuous walking to get there. The real point that needs to be driven home is that if I'm a Delta pilot and I have 45 minutes before my next flight, I am cutting it close if I want to eat Potbelly's. The ease of acquiring food is super important to me, and a reason why I'm not a huge fan of Minneapolis either. I am quickly tiring of Quizno's, the only quick option available to me there. One former ground school classmate and fellow pilot said it best today, "The major difference between a pilot and a jet engine is that the jet engine stops whining once it reaches the gate."
