Our paper printouts didn't seem to be enough to use the check in machines, so we had to wait 40 minutes to be seen by a real person and have our bags checked all the way through to our final destination of Loreto in Baja California. We were also provided with two sets of boarding passes, although the first was ominously stamped with SSSS: we were in line for secondary screening by dint, one presumes, of our complex itinerary.
My, most TSA screeners are humourless drones, aren't they? Sure, there can't be that many laughs in fondling unsuspecting travellers, but surely they could at least raise a semblance of a pleasant smile? As i was, the pat down from a morose uniformed operative took just a few minutes, but explosive screening our rucksacks (and pretty much everything in them) took rather longer, proceeding at glacial speed.
There are four gates at the SAN commuter terminal, but this overstates things: what you have in reality is a single seating area and a couple of counters. We spent half an hour people watching and marvelling at the American preference for intrusive ringtones: surely no one really wants to hear Ride of the Valkyries played loudly with all the tonal quality of an undersea orchestra several miles from the shore?
As the day was fine, the gate staff made use of the pen outside to buffer up the passengers for our flight, prior to leading us to the Saab 340 turboprop across the apron. We took seats 6B and 6C, two on the right hand side of the plane about half way along the short fuselage. This flight can be very bumpy but once we had climbed to our 8,000 feet cruising height it was a pleasant and uneventful trip. A short 20 minutes later we were beginning our descent into LAX over Long Beach with the skyscrapers of downtown off in the distance.
American Eagle flights use a separate small terminal building which is nominally part of terminal 4 but requires a bus transit to anywhere. We were concerned whether we would need to pass through a security checkpoint again on our way to terminal 3 and our Alaska Airlines connecting flight but we needn't have worried: the bus went straight to gate 32 where we climbed a secret staircase to the terminal and our final outbound flight on our itinerary.
Baja in February itinerary
London to San Francisco
San Francisco to San Diego
San Diego to Los Angeles
Los Angeles to Loreto
Loreto to Los Angeles
Los Angeles to San Francisco
San Francisco to London
