Why not to fly out of Reagan National at night

[tamarinne]

I was returning home from the reedrover /achaosofkittens   festivities yesterday. Thunderstorms in Chicago cancelled my afternoon flight, so I rebooked onto an 8 PM flight. That got rescheduled to 9:45 PM, due to, of course, the thunderstorms in Chicago. At 9 PM the woman behind the desk announces that (A) she's working this gate alone, (B) her boarding pass scanner is broken so she will need to check us in manually, and (C) if we are not IN THE AIR by 10 PM, noise restrictions around Reagan National mean that we will not be able to take off. Even if we were on the tarmac ready to go, if we didn't take off by 10 PM we would have to drive back to the gate and find somewhere to spend the night. To her credit, she got it done, and got us all on board in time. We took off at 9:57 PM. But from now on, I think I'm going to use Dulles if I'm flying in the evening.