Las Vegas - Los Angeles / Boeing 737-800 / IFR

As Southwest Airlines Flight 265, I went from Las Vegas to LAX this evening. There was ATC all the way. As usual, I landed well ahead of the real flight, although I left early, too (because I had to go to class shortly after the flight).

Everything went smoothly. ATC imposed no altitude restriction on departure, which is unusual, and it told me to just climb via the departure, but Center did give me an initial restriction of FL190 after the handoff … otherwise I would have climbed all the way to my cruise altitude after the departure.

I came down faster than I would have liked, despite a small headwind, but I still managed to do things smoothly, and I hand-flew the touchdown. Taxied over to Gate 1 (just like the real flight), and I was done.