Trying out one of Southwest’s numerous SoCal routes out of Oakland that I’ve had on my mind for a long time with this one. In recent years, Palm Springs International Airport has undergone rapid growth, most of it seasonal, but some of it year-round. Among these airlines that are somewhat new to the Coachella Valley is American low-cost heavyweight, Southwest Airlines, which serves PSP from 6, soon to be 7 destinations, 4 year-round (Denver, Las Vegas, Oakland, Sacramento, and San Jose) and 2 seasonal (Chicago-Midway and Dallas, with service to Austin beginning next month). Having seen several WN flights arriving from and departing to Palm Springs while flying out of OAK, I’ve had this one at the back of my mind and finally got around to doing it.
Server: Solo
Airline: Southwest Airlines
Aircraft: Boeing 737 MAX 8
Origin: Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport, Oakland, California (OAK)
Destination: Palm Springs International Airport, Palm Springs, California (PSP)
Flight Number: WN1762
Route: KOAK-KPSP
Seat: 25F (Economy)
Time En Route: 1 Hour 22 Minutes
Looking at our jet on a beautiful morning in the East Bay. It’s a lovely day to go flying!
Starting our pushback from Gate 25. We’ve got a fairly full cabin today, but we lucked out by having our row to ourself for the approximately 90-minute flight to Palm Springs.
Taxiing out to the runway past a gaggle of company 737s and a lone Alaska Airlines E175 that’s getting ready to depart for Portland, Oregon
Taking off from Oakland’s Runway 30 while a NetJets Challenger 350 slows down on 28R with the Oakland Hills in the background. One of the interesting facts about Oakland is that while business jets and very occasionally airliners can land on 10R/28L and 10L/28R on the original north side of the airport, they have to depart from 12/30 due to noise abatement rules.
Rocket climb out of the Bay. From here, we can see Golden Gate Park, Downtown San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Predisio, Tiburon, and the Marin Headlands. These high-rate-of-climb westward departures from Oakland are almost always scenic, barring heavy cloud cover and/or rain.
In cruise at 41,000 feet. We were served a light snack and a drink which, although somewhat spare in terms of the portion size, is perfectly adequate for a short flight such as this one.
Final descent into the Coachella Valley. Seems like Palm Springs is mostly golf course, at least from the air.
Midday arrival at PSP. Due to the short runway length, we were thrown forward slightly by the deceleration, although not as hard as is often the case when arriving at somewhere like Burbank.
Deplaned at Gate 9. Almost no sooner than the last passengers ending their journey here in Palm Springs have gotten off the airplane that the passengers boarding for Denver as a continuation of this flight number start getting on. Sic transit Southwest Airlines.
