Why Your Airport is Marginal at Best: Detroit Edition

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.

Meanwhile in the midwest . . .

I woke up in Dayton to disgusting cold weather and rain. I braved it all just to get a breakfast at McDonalds. Dayton was everything I remembered it to be -- sad looking buildings and all. When we reported to the airport, it would seem that Dayton was having the best weather in the entire region. Despite my numerous instrument approaches in the last few weeks, the weather has been decidedly un-winter-like. That all changed in a day. When I flew in to Appleton the previous day, I could see green grass on my approach. 24 hours later, 12 inches of snow covered the landscape. What was snow west of the lake was freezing rain and ice pellets to the east.

My deadhead from Dayton to Detroit was holding over the airport for almost an hour before finding a gap in the ice storm. Once there, we went to our assigned plane that we would fly to Chicago Midway. I was personally not looking forward to landing a jet in a Chicago snowstorm onto icy runways that are notoriously short. After setting up the flight plan, the gate agent came down and told us the flight was canceled. The captain and I gave each other a fist bump. Midway's runways were closed and nothing was getting in or out. I had just scarfed down a Potbelly's chicken salad sandwich and was now regretting this decision. Now I had over three hours to kill before attempting to fly another plane out to South Bend. The anger and stress was clear on people's faces in the terminal, so I tried to make myself scarce. Eventually we made it to South Bend after getting rattled around in fairly significant turbulence all the way in.

I had most of the day to relax before our scheduled report time of 5:00pm. This would soon get pushed to 10:00pm. I went for a stroll back to Notre Dame's campus. I was greeted by unforecasted snow flurries. The campus was fairly dead. Feeling a bit cold, I got excited when I saw a sign for Au Bon Pain. Glory be! -- an ABP! My enthusiasm for hot soup and pastries was soon dampened by the sight of chairs stacked atop tables. I had forgotten that students are on their winter break and everything is pretty much shut down on campus. Lunch would have to wait. I made a stop at the bookstore to warm up for a bit and then made my way over toward the stadium and a mural of what has come to be known as "Touchdown Jesus."





I received a text from the captain that stated our scheduled depart time had now jumped to after midnight. I looked back up at Touchdown Jesus. Perhaps he is not signaling a touchdown, but rather using his arms to gesture and say, "The plane was supposed to be over here in Atlanta, but in fact it's circling somewhere over there above Sheboygan. I eventually got lunch at an Irish pub called Fiddler's Hearth. As far as my ethnic food sampling goes, this seemed like a good fit other than the waitress who seemed annoyed when I ordered a water. Look, I know it's a pub, but it's also noon on a Tuesday. I didn't want to have to explain FAA alcohol regulations, so I left the whole, "I'm a pilot" bit out. Those Irish are just looking for a fight. Nevertheless, my piping hot shepherd's pie was a welcome warmup from the cold weather outside.

As our departure time kept fluctuating, I realized I had time to get some dinner as well. I went to a Thai restaurant with the confusing name of "Cambodian Thai." As there was nothing Cambodian on the menu, it would be akin to opening a deli and naming it "Mexican American." Nonetheless, I kept it tame and ordered Pad Thai. I asked for it spicy, which adequately cleared out my sinuses. It wasn't terribly flavorful, however. It had really good reviews on Yelp, so I was somewhat surprised at my disappointment, but then I reminded myself that I was in South Bend, Indiana. It's best to stick with the Irish pubs perhaps.