To wrap up my summer travels, I decided to fly a new airline on a really wild itinerary: Silver Airways. They were supposed to inaugurate service between Greensboro, Nashville and Orlando in late June, but for unknown reasons (I would assume scheduling issues), the inaugural was twice-delayed to July 25th.
My itinerary was CLT-GSO-BNA-GSO-MCO-CLT, over the span of about 13 hours, with very short connection times in between. Yes, that is 5 flights in the span of 13 hours.
The first leg was as uneventful as you could ask for. Went off without any hitches. Navigating GSO was an interesting experience. I had been there before, but not in the passenger terminal, so it was quite a surprise to find out that I had to exit the secure area and go through security again to get to the other terminal.
Thankfully, I wield the immense power of TSA PreCheck (which I would strongly advise getting, this post is not sponsored by the TSA.), so security was far from difficult.
My plane arrived from Orlando on time, N703SV, a 4 year old ATR 72-600 powered by 2 Pratt and Whitney PW100 turboprops.
We went through the boarding process as usual after the gate agents got the go-ahead from our crew. I sat in Seat 4A the whole way. One thing I noticed from the start is that the seats are not aligned. The seats in front are shifted to the right a bit, creating a very narrow corridor of legroom for whoever is sitting in A, and normal legroom for C.
Another thing I found intriguing is that Silver exclusively reserves overhead bins for roller bags. Everything else goes underneath the seat in front of you.
We pushed back on time from Gate 25A at GSO and taxiied to Runway 23L, at about 25 knots. It was a full flight. Everyone was chatting with each other, was a jolly ol’ time onboard. We landed in Nashville practically on time and taxiied to gate A6 at about 33 knots. With how many turns we were making at that speed, I’m surprised we didn’t start doing Tokyo drifts.
Replay: 3M47 (SIL47) Silver Airways Flight Tracking and History 27-Jul-2023 (KGSO-KBNA) - FlightAware
We had a very quick turnaround in Nashville. Maybe 20 minutes had elapsed from the time I had deplaned to the time I was walking back down that same jetbridge and before I knew it we were pushing back to return to Greensboro. We taxiied to Runway 20R at Nashville and made it back into Greensboro a solid 14 minutes ahead of schedule.
I used the extra time at the gate to top off my phone battery as much as possible, because like most low-cost carriers, Silver does not offer in-seat power.
We pushed back from Gate 25A (again) at GSO 10 minutes early and taxiied out to Runway 23L for an on-time departure to MCO. We fought through some clouds and other weather on the way down, landing in Orlando 11 minutes early.
This flight was the one that had me on the edge of my seat because my return flight to CLT was boarding just after 6 pm. and I really did not want to have to overnight in Orlando.
We landed Runway 35R, which is not where I’d hoped we would land. However, we more than made up for it by taxiing to Gate 13 at a blistering 45 knots. I quickly made a beeline for the tram to Terminal A after deplaning. When I got there, the doors were just opening. Was a very quick ride, and then made way to the tram to gates 30-59, which again, I just barely made.
All in all, I made it to my return flight with 11 minutes until boarding and was massively relieved.
We pushed back for Charlotte on time, and taxiied to Runway 35L, following a United Evo Blue Pencil headed to Newark and taxiing by a Virgin A350-1000.
We made it to our gate in Charlotte a few minutes late, because our gate was first occupied by another aircraft, which then turned into that same aircraft blocking our gate. We parked at D13, which checked off the last concourse at CLT I needed to arrive in.
We ended up travelling a total distance of over 2,000 miles.