On March 26, we flew United Airlines UA2408, AirBus A319 (#4899) from TYS to EWR, to connect with our flight home to PHX. We had seats 2E & F, in FC. Those are the back row in the forward cabin, with a bulkhead behind, with clothing hangers. When we boarded, there were no hangers on the rack, but one of the flight attendants had moved them to storage, so that they would not rattle around.
We arrived a bit early, as we had done an overnight at the attached Hilton TYS, after a wonderful week at Blackberry Farm. In the TYS terminal, we stopped into Ruby Tuesday, for wine, as we had just had a nice breakfast at our hotel.
Things slowed down, as there were some mechanical issues. The ship had arrived, BUT there were issues, and it took a good 40 mins to rectify those. Going back to the beginning of this trip, we had a tight connection between TYS, and EWR, but moved things, and I was so glad that we did. For a leisurely connection, we needed the extra time. That is just how it is, when connecting to other flights.
We boarded about 45 mins late, but were quickly away, on our way to EWR, and then, our flight home. As there was concern about fixing the problem, we started looking at the UA App, to see other travel options. For us, ORD was out of the question, because of some nasty weather hitting it, so we looked at IAH, DEN and IAD, just in case. We did not need to change flights though, and our Gate Agent kept us updated very well.
This A319 had the UA-standard PDE (Personal Device Entertainment), delivered free of charge via the UA App. Note: one needs to download the latest version of the App, and install it (if not already installed), prior to the doors being shut.
On this flight, there were glitches in the PDE, and it took a very, very long time to connect. I do not know if this was due to the equipment, or the path the plane took? The system was rebooted twice, but I still had issues.
I had a Chardonnay, for the pre-departure beverage, and then another (wife had decaf coffee), when we had the short in-flight service. That also included a passed basket of chips, cookies, etc, but we declined.
The flight was short, at only about 1:50 mins, so even with the late start, we were not too far from being on-time for arrival. We parked at C-109, and headed for the UA Club, prior to our EWR - PHX flight, in a couple of hours. Along the way, we stopped into two new (to us) bars in the C Concourse, on the way to C-81. Seems that UA is reworking many of their concourses. We saw changes a month before at IAH, and now EWR. Nice improvements, by my estimation.