Flights for a Day Trip to Detroit, 2025

by admin

August 10, 2025. I made a day-trip to the suburbs of Detroit to watch the Junior League World Series. This post would be about the flights back and forth, together with a few photos from the match.

Philadelphia Skyline

Ticketing

Just like my trip to watch the Junior League World Series last year, I needed to catch the earliest available flights out of Boston to arrive before the match’s first pitch at noon. Fortunately, this time I secured an itinerary connecting through Philadelphia rather than Chicago, as I had done last year. The more direct routing meant I flew out of Boston at 5:54am (instead of 5:15), which made the early morning wake-up somewhat more bearable. Coincidentally, this itinerary also cost 7.5k AA miles, just like last year.

For the return flight, unlike last year, Spirit had exited the Detroit-Boston market, so this time I found an itinerary with American at 8k miles, with a tight connection in Charlotte. Given it’s a Sunday night, 8k miles was somewhat unbelievably cheap, despite I was only scheduled to arrive in Boston past midnight. Expectedly, there was a schedule change invalidating my tight connection, so I changed my connection to Chicago, moving up my arrival time a bit (only for it to be pushed back due to flight delays).

American Airlines flight 1146 and 5480 from Boston to Detroit via Philadelphia

This was the first flight of the day, but the cabin was surprisingly full. Having several American Airlines flights scheduled throughout the month, I had wisely purchased their monthly WiFi subscription earlier, and on this A321neo, connectivity was available gate-to-gate. Honestly, such short hops hardly seem the ideal deployment for the A321neo’s efficiencies, unless American simply needed to reposition aircraft between stations.

American Airlines 1146
Boston, MA (BOS) – Philadelphia, PA (PHL)
Airbus 321neo (N402AN)
Seat 5F
Scheduled Departure – 5:54am
Actual Departure – 6:04am
Scheduled Arrival – 7:30am
Actual Arrival – 6:56am
42 minutes
Here’s GPS tracking:

Here’s a video of the takeoff:

Massachusetts Coast
Long Beach Island New Jersey
Morning Mist over New Jersey Countryside

It was a largely uneventful flight off the Atlantic coast, at a relatively low cruising altitude of 6400m (FL21). Shortly before landing, I was treated to a spectacular view of Philadelphia’s skyline bathed in the golden light of the morning sun.

Philadelphia Skyline
Philadelphia Skyline
Philadelphia Skyline

Here’s a video of the landing:

We landed more than half an hour ahead of schedule, that meant I could attend to some work on my laptop before my next flight to Detroit.

American Airlines 5480 Operated by PSA Airlines
Philadelphia, PA (PHL) – Detroit, MI (DTW)
Bombardier CRJ-700 (N725PS)
Seat 2F
Scheduled Departure – 8:20am
Actual Departure – 8:50am
Scheduled Arrival – 10:06am
Actual Arrival – 9:56am
1 hour and 6 minutes
Here’s GPS tracking:

Here’s a video of the takeoff:

Unfortunately, the productivity narrative took an unexpected turn on this leg. This particular aircraft (CRJ-700, N725PS) seemed to feature a different WiFi system (Gogo’s air-to-ground technology) than the other American planes I flew throughout the month. It only became available once we reached 3,000 meters, and even then, the connection proved disappointingly sluggish, scarcely exceeding 1Mbps.

American Eagle CRJ700 (N725PS)
My plane to Detroit.
Coatesville Pennsylvania
Typical Pennsylvania countryside.
Susquehanna River
Susquehanna River
Outskirts of York Pennsylvania.
Gordie Howe International Bridge
A bridge connecting US and Canada that’s near the end of its construction.
Distant Downtown Detroit

And here’s a video of the landing. Interestingly, upon landing in Detroit, the cabin crew welcomed us to “Philadelphia”. 😨

The Game

Just like last year, here’s a quick rundown of a selection of photos I took during the game. But unlike last year, I was too lazy to properly title them. 😫 These photos are in the public domain.

2025 Junior League World Series Game

American Airlines flight 3365 and 3107 from Detroit to Boston via Chicago

Fast forward to my flights back to Boston. Much like my flights from Anchorage 6 weeks ago, there was widespread delay at Chicago O’Hare today. (This time, weather didn’t appear to be the culprit.) My original itinerary was

AA 3365 Detroit 6:49pm -> Chicago O’Hare 7:21pm
AA 2682 Chicago O’Hare 8:25pm -> Boston 11:59pm

This represented what is typically a comfortable one-hour connection.
However, at 3:30pm, while en route to the airport, I received an email notification that AA 3365 to Chicago had been delayed, with a new arrival time of 7:49pm. This left me with just over the reportedly 35-minute minimum connection time before AA 2682 to Boston departed, not quite enough for the phone agent to classify this as an involuntary schedule change.
Had I not been routing through Chicago, there were two alternative connections through either LaGuardia or Washington Reagan, both departing Detroit around 5:30pm with available seats. Unfortunately, without the involuntary designation, I couldn’t be rebooked onto those flights.

After settling into Detroit Airport and watching the delays cascade further for both of my flights, I made another call to American Airlines. This time, they agreed to treat this as an involuntary schedule change, but neither of my alternative options had available seats. With my options exhausted, I decided to give up on my damage mitigation efforts and simply sit and relax. AA 2682 was also delayed, so at least an overnight stay at O’Hare seemed unlikely.

The experience at Detroit Airport, however, left much to be desired. The airport WiFi was very slow. ~~(I probably included too many references to WiFi speed and productivity in what is otherwise a leisure travel post.)~~ Additionally, there was a very unprofessional Frontier gate agent blasting through the PA like she was announcing the apocalypse rather than seat assignments nextdoor.

American Airlines 3365 Operated by Enovy Airlines
Detroit, MI (DTW) – Chicago O’Hare, IL (ORD)
Embraer ERJ-170 (N766JM)
Seat 3F
Scheduled Departure – 6:49pm
Actual Departure – 7:49pm
Scheduled Arrival – 7:21pm
Actual Arrival – 7:34pm
45 minutes

For my flight from Detroit to Chicago, fortunately, there was no additional delay since the first email notification this afternoon. However, continuing the downward trajectory of my luck with WiFi since this morning, this time, I found myself unable to even access the in-flight WiFi login page.

Lake Michigan Coast
Northern suburb of Michigan.

After a 14-minute taxi since touchdown in Chicago O’Hare, we pulled into the gate at 7:48pm, about an hour before my connecting flight (AA2682, which was also delayed). As it happened, an earlier flight to Boston (AA3107), originally scheduled to depart at 7:10pm, still had a few available seats and hadn’t yet left the gate. Better still, its gate lay directly along the route to my original connection of AA2682.
So I made haste for AA3107, and after a 10-second exchange with its gate agents, made it onto the flight on standby.

American Airlines 3107
Boeing 737-800 (N315PE)
Seat 8E
Scheduled Departure – 7:10pm
Actual Departure – 9:01pm
Scheduled Arrival – 10:42pm
Actual Arrival – 12:03am + 1
2 hours and 2 minutes

This was the only flight of the day that I wasn’t upgraded. Given that I didn’t have a good shot at upgrading for my original AA2682, I had little to lose in making the standby, which ended up getting me home about half an hour earlier. This also meant I didn’t have a very productivity-friendly seating. After having been awake for more than 16 hours, I was rather hoping to catch some rest on this flight. Consequently, there is no WiFi review here. 😴

END

Flights for a Day Trip to Detroit, 2025 by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Category: Flight Log, Travel Tags: American Airlines

Huang's Site

Fluctuat Nec Mergitur

Flights for a Day Trip to Detroit, 2025

Ticketing

American Airlines flight 1146 and 5480 from Boston to Detroit via Philadelphia

The Game

American Airlines flight 3365 and 3107 from Detroit to Boston via Chicago

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