Another Day, Another Airport!

Wednesday
It was a good thing I made it back to London yesterday. Because this morning at just after 5am I got a call from Scheduling to assign me a trip to Newark. There was no time to go back to sleep. I was out the door and on my way to the airport within about 90 minutes. This was my first work trip since January 2nd! That’s what being on ‘Reserve’ during a pandemic and (almost) closed International borders looks like!

I was off to Newark. And this was the view as I was getting off the plane there. It’s not just a pretty view of two planes against the Manhattan skyline. Please forgive the reflections in the window. Both of them are United Airlines planes even though the smaller one (a 737-900) says ‘Continental Airlines’. A few years ago Continental and United merged, as most US carriers did after 9/11. Sadly for them, it was decided to use the United name, but we did keep the Continental globe logo on the tail of our planes.

Since the merge, however, we have kept two planes in vintage livery. This one is the Continental side, displaying the livery first seen on their planes in 1947, and somewhere flying around our system is a plane painted in a vintage United airlines livery. I love them both!

See the Extra photo for more of our planes, including our ‘Star Wars’ plane! We’re in the process of replacing our gold globes to blue ones on the tails, which is why there is a variety in these shots.

My trip was only a one-way assignment, with the return as a passenger. Normally we still get a long layover with an overnight hotel, but I elected to go home right away so I was back on a plane that evening. Probably a stupid (exhausting) decision, but having been away for several days I was eager to get home. At least I knew I’d get a good seat and could sleep all the way home.