As much time as I spend with flightsimming, and also real GA flying, I rarely have the chance to fly in an airliner. The need just doesn't seem to come up much.

This week, though, I'm on a trip to Redmond, WA. Yesterday was a long day of flying, in a United Boeing 757-200 first to Denver and then to Seattle. Overall a pretty pleasant flight and favorable conditions. We got to Denver 45 minutes early so I had more time to walk around and stretch after 4 hours on the plane. In Seattle, we landed 20 minutes early but our gate was still in use so we sat on the taxiway for 20 minutes.

Not a bad travel experience but frustrating in a way for an aviation enthusiast. I did not have window seat and the person there kept shutting the shade to work on their laptop. I really wanted to see outside! I got so see some of the departure and landing but so frustrating not to be able to see more.

Of course, I really wanted to be up front, left seat. I'm used to that great view in my Piper Archer and even airliner flying with FSX and FS2004. It's really a shame there's no way to do that. At least they should build airliners with bigger side windows.