Martha’s Vineyard to LaGuardia | Delta Connection
Origin: Vineyard Haven (Martha’s Vineyard)
Destination: New York/LaGuardia
Flight Number: DL5859
Scheduled Departure: 12:35 PM EDT
Actual Departure: 12:34 PM EDT
Scheduled Arrival: 1:48 PM EDT
Actual Arrival: 1:42 PM EDT
Airline: Delta Connection (Operated by Republic)
Aircraft: Embraer E175 (N213JQ)
Flight Time: 45 minutes
Cruising Altitude: 10,000 feet
Server: Expert ig 😏😏
Hello from the tiny airport of Martha’s Vineyard! After a lovely week here, it’s time to head home. We got to the airport 45 minutes before our departure (if you don’t check a bag, you could do 30 minutes). Clearing security took all of 2 minutes (they actually honor TSA PreCheck here). It was pouring rain, and the waiting area is under this tent with a leaky roof. We stood under this little alcove with a self service shop to shield ourselves from the rain.
Boarding is no simple process here. There’s exactly one door for all the big carriers (United, American, and Delta), and they were trying to board our flight, an American flight to LGA, and an American flight to DCA all at the same time. There’s also no public address system, so the gate agents are shouting through megaphones.
Nevertheless, we boarded exactly on time and made the very rainy walk across the apron to our plane, which came in about an hour prior from LaGuardia. They checked our boarding passes again before we got onto the plane, to ensure passengers were getting on the right plane. The cabin was clean and fresh, but a little tight. I was not sitting next to my family due to a weird thing on the Delta website with seat selection, but one seat behind them. I had the whole row to myself, including across the aisle, which was nice.
The seats are regional jet seats - nothing too fancy. Legroom is tight, but they rarely run flights more than two hours with these. The captain made an announcement and told us that we had a very tight slot to get out of Martha’s Vineyard before another round of weather rolled in. Boarding was expeditious and we pushed back a few minutes ahead of schedule. Turbulence was anticipated because of the weather, so they were really adamant about checking our seatbelts twice as we taxied to runway 33 for departure.
We were rather light today, and rocketed out of MVY using minimal runway. Almost as soon as we were in the air, we got tossed around a bit by the wind as we turned northwest. Soon after departure, as we bounced our way through the clouds, the flight attendants said that the WiFi was turned on. I connected, and it said we had internet connection. We did - technically. It was so slow I couldn’t even open the WiFi speed test on Safari, so functionally it didn’t exist. I wasn’t expecting much, since we were cruising rather low and through lots of weather.
We broke through the storm and made our way up into Rhode Island. Because of the weather and the short flight, there was no service to speak of from the flight attendants. The seatbelt sign was on the entire ride. I passed the time staring out the window at all the cloud formations. Our captain kept us very well informed on her attempts to circumvent much of the weather.
Near Hartford, we turned directly west. The WiFi started working a little better for about 90 seconds, but then cut off again. Something was weird with the speaker system, and the boarding music started playing for about 10 minutes before they were finally able to get it off.
There was a lot of wind as we wound our way toward’s LGA’s runway 22 for landing. The approach was really scenic, and you could clearly see just how busy New York City’s airspace is. There was traffic from JFK heading north way over us, but also the LGA departures off 13 looping around near to our aircraft.
We landed fast and hard. The first touchdown was about halfway through the runway intersection. Then we bounced and hit again. Then another bounce and we finally smashed into the runway for the final time. We did some heavy braking and turned off the runway at the second to last exit.
Welcome to New York! We taxied over to gate 99, on the very far side of the airport. When we parked, we were informed that they had to wait for someone to come and attach the jetway, which only took about 5 minutes. You’d think they’d already be there by the time we parked, especially since a plane had just pushed from the same gate a few minutes prior to our arrival. Whatever the case, we still got in ahead of time and had about 4 hours to explore LGA before our departure for Minneapolis.
Seat: 5/10
Crew: 8/10
Food/Beverage: 0/10 (what I expected)
In Flight Entertainment/Wi-Fi: 2/10
Landing: 2/10 (I mean… we survived, but that’s about it)
Total: 19/50 (22%)
