Good late evening from a little bistro in Montevideo, Uruguay 🇺🇾 and not only does this restaurant or even city deserve more fame but this ENTIRE country does. It was truly beautiful every corner I went to and not to mention the people were really friendly and happy to see foreigners exploring and enjoying their country. The capital city itself reminded me of neighbouring Buenos Aires, Argentina 🇦🇷 a lot it has very similar architecture and cuisine I’d maybe even say Montevideo was better than BA since it was less crowded thanks to this place being a hidden gem but don’t get me wrong, I still loved Buenos Aires and can’t wait to return there or even here one day. I haven’t even talked about the safety, I felt SUPER SAFE here in the city or in the countryside, solo or with others I never felt insecure wondering around compared to other South American hot spots like Rio de Janeiro & São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷 or even many of the big cities in Colombia 🇨🇴 where you better keep a good eye around or you’ll be their next victim. Still decided to play smart as Uruguay 🇺🇾 is listed as a level 2 on the US Travel Advisory and I didn’t want to play any chances. And the final thing I’ll miss the most out of my time here is watching the sunrise on the beach in Cuidad de La Costa just on the outskirts of the city and I hate to say it but it reminded of how much I HATE the summer heat. Uruguay 🇺🇾 is in the southern hemisphere so while it’s winter back home. It’s summer down here and while a break from the cold is nice, it is absolutely BRUTAL it would often reach the high 80s and even low 90s not fun at all but the beach itself was very pretty! 😍 Cuidad de la Costa is also not to far from Carrasco International Airport the main airport serving the capital city and entire country and which is where I’ll be heading be to catch my American Airlines flight back home to Miami 🏝️😎 on their Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner once again in main cabin and I’m glad you’ll be joining me again. American operates out of the sole terminal here and the terminal was DESERTED the only people here were a few airline workers talking about going out to dinner in like 2 hours which would’ve been 10pm and that reminds me that I forgot to mention that Montevideo and Buenos Aires both have that unwritten rule where EVERYBODY goes to dinner late it could be 8pm where most people in the US 🇺🇸 have dinner but I could still get a lunch menu from most places why do they do this? I have no clue but it’s very interesting for sure. The other folks in this terminal were just general airport workers and the passengers and crew that would be on my flight to the 305 🏝️😎 tonight. The terminal itself is also very spacious and I could imagine hearing my echo when all the passengers except me go through security but I didn’t feel like trying that just in case they close the checkpoint. Many signs can be spotted around the airport talking about Uruguay 🇺🇾 and the world with one in the check in hall saying “Uruguay, bienvenidos al mundo” which translates to “Uruguay, welcome to the world” and with one in the baggage claim where I was a week ago saying “mundo, bienvenidos a Uruguay” meaning “World, welcome to Uruguay” pretty nice touches done. Now like I said in the last instalment, MVD is small and when I say small I really mean it. The main terminal ONLY has 4 gates and they are currently not being used right now as the there is an almost 4 hour gap between the previous departure to Asuncion, Paraguay 🇵🇾 on Paranair and our AA flight to MIA. It kind of felt like we were some special VIP flight and the entire terminal was closed to make way for us. Before making my way to the gate, I decided to stop by a small store to buy some last minute snacks and even a few souvenirs to remind me of my amazing time in Uruguay 🇺🇾
FLIGHT INFO:
Origin: Carrasco/Cesareo L. Berisso Intl 🇺🇾 (SUMU)
Destination: Miami Intl 🇺🇸 (KMIA)
Flight Time: 8:10
Boeing 787-8 (American Airlines)
Server: Expert
Last Saturday I arrived into gate 4 on N801AC and it would be fitting that exactly a week later, I depart once again from gate 4 and even better back on N801AC yeah now this will be the 3rd time I fly this aircraft. In case you didn’t see the first part of this trip, it’s AAs 2nd Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner and the one who performed the inaugural flight and it turned 10 years old this month 🎉 now don’t let the small airport size or even vacancy fool you, MIA → MVD is a very popular route in the VFR or Visiting Family Relatives market and not to mention that this flight only occurs between late October to late March makes the demand soar even higher and just like my flight into Montevideo, the gate agent told me that this flight would also be 100% FULL yikes 😬boarding thankfully began on time which is good as this flight and even the sector back to MVD is NOTORIOUS for delays more about that in part 1 so let’s get back on this Dreamliner shall we?
Since we are back on the same aircraft, it will obviously the same setup inside with 234 seats in total with 20 in flagship business, 28 in premium economy and the remains 186 in economy with 48 being extra legroom main cabin extra seats. I won’t go back into specifics like the seat models again as I already talked about them on my previous flight and going through all that again would just be tedious. As a @NonStopsAviation tradition, I will once again be back in the same row I was in previously row 29 to be specific but instead of being on the left side of the plane, I’ll be on the right side so seat 29L this time around. Once again, waiting for me on the seat was a pillow, blanket and bottle of water very thoughtful of American to provide for this overnight flight. Now when the gate agent and even myself told you that this flight was going out full, we weren’t lying EVERY single seat ended up being occupied and sure enough, a lot of them were Uruguayans returning to the states after visiting their friends and families and even a few of them bring on my flight into MVD a week ago small world. We began our pushback right on time but were stopped for around 15 minutes on the taxiway for some odd reason. Like I’ve said millions of times MVD isn’t a big airport at all and we’re literally the only active flight so what was this delay for?
After a short while, we began moving again and after a kind of uneventful taxi to MVDs runway 24, we were off! The only odd thing I noticed was that we extended the flaps while taxiing which is something I never experienced before but I’m sure it was just a small mistake by the crew to forget them during the unexpected ground stop.
While I didn’t get to see the best view over Montevideo, my right side view did let me grab a few snaps 📸 of the north side of the city. Luckily, a drone came up and snagged this shot of us making the northbound turn with a direct view of the city center behind us. What a way to say goodbye to Montevideo!
This time around, the crew decided to push the aircraft higher than my previous flight my only 3,000ft that is out cruising altitude would be 38,000ft around 5,000ft below the surface ceiling of the B788. The crew also started the dinner service as soon as possible as it was already late for me and my seat mates at least as everybody on this flight was pretty much Uruguayan and were totally fine with a midnight dinner. Our main course would be Beef with Mashed Potatoes and Green beans which were accompanied with more cheese and crackers, bread roll but butter 🥖🧈 more salad 🥗 and a brownie mixed cookie 🍪 dessert or as AA calls it the Brookie along with the traditional water bottle and beverage choice which I went with Coke. It was very good especially that brookie 🤤 normally I’m not a beef person myself but they managed to make it work out for me somehow so I gotta commend this crew for that and especially one women named Jess, she worked the flight into MVD last night and was completely OVERWHELMED with not only the flight duration as she was new to long haul flying but the amount of people on the inbound flight and this one. But despite those challenges, her and her colleagues always remained in a happy mood and she even told me she was glad to check off Uruguay 🇺🇾 as a destination as her best friend throughout high school was from there and the 2 still remain close friends 10 years after they both graduated. Jess and the rest of her crew earn their 5 stars ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ heck I’d even give them 6! Soon after dinner wrapped up, the crew dimmed the lights meaning that it’s pretty much time to go to sleep which will be trying to do until hopefully breakfast time so let’s see how it goes.
After flying over Uruguay 🇺🇾 Argentina 🇦🇷 Paraguay 🇵🇾 Bolivia 🇧🇴 Brazil 🇧🇷 and Colombia 🇨🇴 during the course of the night, I was woken up by my seat mates not to reach over me but to tell me that breakfast was starting so I guess my attempt to sleep through this flight was successful. It was pretty much as basic I’d come to expect from AA especially after what we got on our previous flight, all we got was a small ham and cheese croissant 🥐 with a a beverage choice which I chose some coffee ☕️ as this would be a long day. While this would seem underwhelming, we are scheduled for a 6:35am arrival into Miami 🏝️😎 which is still pretty early so I can’t truly complain. Down below is Jamaica 🇯🇲 just east of the capital city of Kingston and you can even make out a sliver of Haiti 🇭🇹 after breakfast I went to the lavatory to change from my summer clothes back to some clothes more fitted for winter as a cold front is kind of back in the 305 🏝️😎 for the time being thanks to some winter storms up north. Once I returned to my seat, I didn’t feel like watching anything on the IFE system nor any content on my phone so I decided to have a chat with my seat mates, a Russian 🇷🇺 couple living in New York City 🗽🍎 who came down to Uruguay 🇺🇾 for tourism like myself and also found it very similar to its neighbour across the water. We were also 100% sure were the only tourists on the plane except for some of the cabin crew like Jess and speaking of Jess, I chatted with her a bit in the galley while waiting for the lavatory.
Soon enough we crossed over Cuba 🇨🇺 and we’d soon begin our descent not without a video playing about passport control 🛂 reminding me of the mess I’d get into on the ground but our approach was very simple. We’d fly over the straights of Florida between the keys and Bahamas 🇧🇸 before flying more inland towards Biscayne National Park and Key Biscayne before we’d get a full view of the city along with beaches and port eventually crossing into the US 🇺🇸 over Coconut Grove/South Miami passing by the airport on right downwind before turning right base a bit before Krome Ave and finally heading back eastbound towards the beach before coming to land on RWY 9 and down there is our first sight of home and even in the night, I can still make out downtown, Brickell, PortMiami, Miami Beach and South Beach and they all look fantastic this early morning. ❤️
MIA looked equally as beautiful and before we knew it, we were on final for MIAs RWY 9 just as we crossed above the Floridas Turnpike/Dolphin Expressway interchange next to the fittingly called Dolphin Mall and for some reason not even a full mile away from the also fitting called Miami International Mall which makes sense as it’s really close to Miami International Airport and is often overflown by departing and arriving aircraft.
TOUCHDOWN! Welcome back to Miami 🏝️😎 and the end of another fantastic trip down to South America. Both the trip itself and flights were amazing, good eats, good seats, great crews especially Jess and sufficient IFE. My only complaint would be the breakfast which let’s face it was completely weak sauce on behalf of AA and while it’s better than nothing at all, it could easily be improved even 2 or 3 biscoff cookies with a choice of coffee or orange juice would’ve worked better in my opinion but with a 6:35 schedule arrival time and with an actual arrival time of 5:31am I say it worked fine. I will definitely fly American Airlines to and from Montevideo once again mostly because they are the only nonstop option once again and as a South Florida 🏝️😎🛥️🎭 resident, AA will always be my choice of airline even when other carriers enter the MVD market.
The MIA gods blessed us this morning, instead of parking in the gorgeous concourse D making us go through passport control there, we went instead to concourse E more specifically gate E8 and while this terminal isn’t pretty. It’s passport control 🛂 is much tolerable than in concourse D and we were one for the first few flights on the ground either way so it wouldn’t have mattered too much anyways. And me and my seat mates who were almost at the very back of the plane, got through passport control and reclaimed all of our bags only 30 MINUTES after stepping off the aircraft and their next flight up to NYC 🗽🍎 wasn’t until 9:00am so they decided to stop by a Cafe Versailles for a proper breakfast and I tagged along with them. After that, we parted ways, they headed back into the terminal while I made my way back to my car to begin the drive back home to Palm Beach 🏝️🎭 and while leaving MIA, I saw our aircraft parked at a remote stand alongside the Airport Expressway where she’d sit all day before being towed into a gate for a flight to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 🇧🇷 that will be it for tonight’s journey on American Airlines from Montevideo, Uruguay 🇺🇾 to Miami 🏝️😎 on their Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner in main cabin stay tuned for next spring as we return to Colombia 🇨🇴 for spring break in the real world that is and as always between now and the next time, see you in the sky! 😉👋
