Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

Am now in the Raleigh/Durham area after coming in this morning on NW 4758. Good flight in that it was uneventful. I tell ya, these little Pinnacle/Northwest regional jet hops ex-IND are great. The price is good, the times are good, and it beats the bejeezus out of connecting. You don't get any frills, but being able to go from point A to point B without any hassles is all I expect for my air travel dollar these days.

This was the second time I've flown 4758 to RDU. This time, the whole fam came along, including my 3-yr old son. He's a great flyer to begin with, but these CRJ flights work really well for him too. He gets to look out the window and play with his toys and nobody is bothered by him on such a short flight.

RDU airport is decent. The layout is good for traffic flow in and out. It's two linear terminals with a loop road running between them, short term parking in the middle of the loop. Similar to LAX but with only two, much smaller terminals. I've only been in the A terminal, which is the older one with all airlines except AA. It's been kept up and refurbished, even added onto over the years, to the point that it's very nice. And the two-terminal system makes it seem like RDU isn't such a big airport. I've heard Terminal C is nice; this is where AA is located. RDU used to be a hub for AA, but it was de-hubbed and I guess now you'd call it a focus city. They have a lot of direct flights to non-hub cities, and that wonderful nonstop flight to LGW. All in all, a nice facility for a nice metro area.

The one thing about the RDU metro area, though - man, is it spread out. For a metro of right around 1 million people, it sure is scattered over a large area. There doesn't seem to be much density anywhere. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

Return flight will be Sunday, and hopefully it will be equally uneventful. Next trip is next week to include EWR and maybe CLT...

Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Did they serve drinks on the flight? How bad is security to deal with? Also how busy or not busy was the NW concourse here?

Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

Yes, they served drinks. Only about 20 pax on the plane, so we got whole cans. No pretzels or anything, though.

Security was no problem at all. Flight time was 0720. We got to the airport at 0615, parked in Tiger, took the bus, walked into the terminal at 0625. The line to check bags was kind of long, but I had checked in online and we went over to the left side and checked bags only. Went over to the food court by B/C and had some breakfast, then walked over to A security at 0655-0700. All three lines open, but only one person in each line going through. So we breezed through and had plenty of time to spare.

Concourse A wasn't too crowded, even down on the end by A7/8 where we were (A7A). There were plenty of seats for sitting, and lots of flights leaving. MCI was leaving at 0700, ours at 0720, SFO was leaving at 0800, and the early flights to DTW, MSP, and MEM all leaving around the same time from A5 thru A8. Everything running smoothly and on time.

Interestingly, the first time I flew from IND after the liquids restriction, it was the 21:35 Sunday night flight to MCI. No one was around to check whether you were taking liquids. This time, however, 2 TSAers were waiting by the gate after your boarding pass was scanned, to look in your carryons for liquids. Didn't take more than 20-30 seconds, though; no big deal.