Good morning everybody from downtown Chicago, now today is Friday January 10th and by now I should’ve been in my final destination of Jackson Hole but once I arrived from Miami 🏝️😎 yesterday morning, my flight got hit with a HEAVY delay, no not 2 hours, not 5 not even 8, the delay was 23 HOURS long so I ended up having to have to stay overnight in Chicago since all remaining flights to Jackson on both American and United Airlines were fully booked. American Airlines at least did give us all a hotel to spend the night in to compensate so it wasn’t all bad and the hotel itself was actually pretty nice, I was completely lost during my time here since I never had planned to stay here for long but I did make sure to check out the famous Bean 🫘 along with Navy Pier and got to eat at the Cheesecake Factory which is always fun. Unfortunately I couldn’t squeeze time in to go plane spotting at O’Hare or even Midway so that’s another reason to return for a proper visit to the Windy City and not an unexpected overnight layover. I got to ORD pretty early mainly so I can explore the airport as I wished to do that on my layover and was able to once I found out about the delay but didn’t since I wanted to secure a hotel. AAs hub at O’Hare is based in terminal 3 sharing it with Spirit, Contour, Aer Lingus and majority of their closest one world partners. I was already checked in for my flight 2 days ago as this flight was originally, thankfully I didn’t have any checked bags with me so as soon as I got to the terminal it was straight to the checkpoint which was quick since it was actually open. O’Hare is a pretty well known airport, it’s always ranked as one of the busiest in the USA 🇺🇸 and even the world 🌎 but the famous Christmas movies, Home Alone and even the sequel had sections filmed here and even in this exact terminal it of course looks much different now but you can still make out what it was in 90 and 92. AAs section of ORD is pretty iconic and is constantly debated against United’s terminal 1 which is home to some of the sculptures around and even the world famous, tunnel of lights connecting the main concourse with a satellite concourse I prefer the American terminal probably since I have a bit of bias towards them being a South Florida 🏝️😎🛥️🏌️ and growing up flying with them but I really like the display of flags they have. Thanks to my early arrival and wanting to get steps in, I was able to go throughout the airport from T3 all the way to T1 passing by the many sights of O’Hare. Once my tour around the airport ended I went back to the K concourse where my aircraft was waiting for me.
FLIGHT INFO:
Origin: Chicago O’Hare International 🇺🇸 (KORD)
Destination: Jackson Hole 🇺🇸 (KJAC)
Flight Time: 2:35
Airbus A319-100 (American Airlines)
Server: Expert
Here is our aircraft who had just arrived from Austin earlier this morning, N70020 an Airbus A319 delivered straight to American in September 2014, I always get happy to fly on of their A319s for a reason you probably know but I’ll share again once we get onboard. Even though we were already heavily delayed, ANOTHER delay had to come hit us thanks to the weather outside. Well after almost 10 years of flying AA consistently, I finally got delAAyed 😂 hopefully this will be the last night since my bank account isn’t going to appreciate the extra expenses I had to make during my short stay in Chicago. The delay thankfully wasn’t long at all since the visibility cleared up fairly quickly and we were able to board.
Americans A319s have a total of 128 seats across the 2 classes, up front are 4 domestic first seats utilizing Weber 6850 recliners in a 2-2 configuration and I forget to tell you this but, AA did give us some travel credit to use in the future and I decided to use some of it to upgrade from main cabin to first class so this is where I’ll be staying for this 2 and a half hour flight to Jackson more specifically 2F. The seat is really comfortable which I would come to expect from a seat sold as first class even on a domestic flight and why do I like the AA A319 so much? Well they all still feature seat back screens which I’m pretty happy about since I kind of criticizing American about abandoning them on my previous flight from Miami 🏝️😎 since we were already delayed by not only a few hours but also pretty much a whole day and the fact that the weather was good and traffic was light, we wasted NO time getting out of the gate and to ORDs runway 28R for take off!
Bye, bye Chicago!
We flew pretty much straight west heading over northwest Illinois towards Iowa before crossing into South Dakota before reaching Wyoming. We reached our cruising altitude as soon as we flew right by the mighty Mississippi River. The flight attendant dedicated to serving the first class cabin this afternoon was in a really good mood and was even happy nobody got out of control especially with the flight being pushed back a day. The food soon came around which I chose grilled chicken 🍗 with a side of Salad 🥗 Bread 🥖 and a brownie for dessert which was EXTREMELY tasty 😋 I gotta commend American for providing such a good meal service and while I wasn’t starving, it sure does beat a simple snack and drink the economy folks are getting, with the amazing food and flight attendant we will give another 5 stars out ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ this flight is supposed to be scenic but towards the end and right now it’s just views of the plains in the Midwest so it was time to check out was our PTVs have to offer, the system being used is the Thales TopSeries which works extremely well even for todays standards and still got some of the newest offerings from Hollywood but I didn’t watch a movie or TV show, instead I found a documentary kind of thing about the Grand Teton National Park, a place I’ll be visiting on this trip and even fly by on our approach into Jackson and because of this and like I do 99.9% of the time, I skipped out on the WiFi.
The documentary ended at the right time as once we reached western South Dakota, the views were getting much better to the point I never looked away from them except for a brief moment to tune into the inflight map which I like to do during scenic moments like this.
Soon enough, we crossed into Wyoming and it was time to begin the descent we came in heading northwest by many peaks before turning right by the Grand Teton National Park before coming to absolutely FLOOR IT on RWY 19 and here is that view of the park, useless fact but the site of the airport is technically part of the park making JAC the ONLY airport in the country to be located in a national park.
This has got to be one of the most beautiful approaches I’ve witnessed in the USA 🇺🇸 in terms of landscape, I just love approaching next to mountain ranges since it reminds me of Cali, Colombia 🇨🇴 and as we enjoy this approach we get to see the Grand Teton itself which peaks at 13,775ft above sea level 😳
TOUCHDOWN! literally once we made contact with the ground, we slammed the brakes and had reverse thrust to the MAX just to avoid over running as just like Eagle, JAC is a short, high elevation field making it a bit tough to land at but either way welcome to Jackson Hole everybody, this was a really good and scenic flight sure the delays were annoying but I did get to explore a bit of Chicago again after some time and got to check out a lot of the famous points of O’Hare due to this, I didn’t expect to be in first class on this flight but I’m glad I made the upgrade since our flight attendant was amazing and so was our meal, the seat was awesome as I’d come to expect on domestic first and the IFE was very good for its age and still provided lots of content and don’t even get me started on the approach into JAC. It was fabulous, you can definitely find me back not only flying into this airport but also on Americans A319 in first class or even economy class especially if they keep the legacy AA interiors intact!
Someone working around the park made sure to spot out arrival, he told me he needed to get this done fast as he was babysitting a Bison 🦬 and it would escape very fast if he wasn’t paying attention.
Stepping of this plane was magical, it felt like I was in a new country and the mountains behind the airport just screams CLO it may be my strong connections to Cali kicking in but it just does have that feeling. Unlike Eagle, JAC has no jet bridges which made this experience even better especially with the nice weather overlooking the ramp and the mountain range in the back. I stepped inside the terminal which just fits the theme for an airport serving ski resort and made my way to a rental car center to rent a car to get to my hotel and get settled in before I start skiing ⛷️ and exploring the many things the area has to offer. That will be it regarding this extremely delayed flight on American Airlines Airbus A319 from Chicago O’Hare to Jackson Hole in first class stay tuned for our flight back to ORD and as always between now and the next time, see you in the sky! 😉👋
Oh one more thing, @United403 summon
