A few months ago, I talked about a quiet airport experience I had at Boston Logan. That was on a Tuesday morning in the middle of March, and it was one of the first times I had seen that airport empty to such an extent. It kind of made sense with my travel date, as most business travel takes off on Monday, and the middle of March is typically not a high season for leisure travel. It was still a surprise nonetheless, as it’s rare to see an empty hub airport during the day.
That said, I had another empty airport experience recently, also flying out of Boston Logan. The conditions were a bit different, though.
I was flying out of Boston to go back to New York again, but this time on a 6am flight with Delta. Delta primarily operates out of Terminal A, but their international flights and few select domestic flights fly out of Terminal E.
Terminal E is (mostly) the international terminal at Logan. Most international flights leave in the evening though, meaning the morning is pretty quiet. For obvious reason, it’s even quieter at 5-6am.
My flight, DL2611, was scheduled to depart from Terminal E that morning. Not a lot of flights are out of that terminal at that time of day; there was one British Airways flight and one other Delta flight to Austin when I was there.
So as you can imagine, the building was very empty. As someone who primarily uses large, hub/city airports all the time, the quietness was fun.
I had arrived at around 4:45, about 1 hour and 15 minutes before my flight.
The other British Airways flight wasn’t scheduled til 7:25, so I didn’t see many passengers for that flight in the check-in area.
A little tangent: This was the old security checkpoint at Terminal E before its expansion a couple of years ago. Now that the new checkpoint is open in the new terminal, this area has been left unused. I wonder if the airport has plans to turn this area into anything.
Delta’s check-in desks were mostly empty.
TSA PreCheck had 2 or 3 other people when I went through. I was in and out in literally 1 minute or so.
Most shops and restaurants were still closed at this time. There was a coffee shop and a Hudson that opened at 5am, and that was about it.
This is British Airways flight BA238 to London Heathrow, operated by a Boeing 777-200ER.
Alone in an airport!
As I said, I enjoyed the quietness as someone who mostly uses large, hub/city airports all the time.
This is the area under the British Airways Lounge. No flights were departing from here, gate E11, all the way to gate E1 for several hours. It was understandably like a ghost town.
For comparison, this is the same area during the day.
All of these photos were taken at around 5am.
Eventually, the area closest to the security checkpoint became a little busier as time went on.
My gate was E13, which was right in this area.
This was the Airbus A220-100 that took me to New York.
I’m a fan of Terminal E at Boston Logan, especially since the latest expansion and renovations. This was my first time boarding a domestic flight from there (as it’s mostly used for international operations), so that was a nice change. And all in all, it was fun to walk around an empty terminal for once!
All photos taken by the author.
