Clouds from my seat.
I have just returned from my one week vacation/first time ever on a plane/first time ever on the West Coast. Since this was such a momentous occasion for me, I’m going to have to break up these posts into mini-categories; flying experience, food, California/Arizona and their different towns. This one is dedicated to my first experience in flight.
My buddy recommended I fly Delta, so I ponied up the extra $20 and went with them over United Airlines. I was surprised by my experience for a few reasons, but mainly because my flights there and back were so completely different.
My first flight departed JFK at around 7pm, scheduled to arrive in Phoenix-Sky Harbor at 9:49 pm. I boarded the plane with some anxiety but that was quickly trumped by my excitement. I arrived at my seat (an aisle seat) to find somebody sitting in it, thinking to myself “great, I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come”. I realized it was a family sitting in the whole row, so I decided to be a good samaritan and switch seats with the guy, so I ended up with the window seat in the row behind. Delta requires you to sign in to your flight 24 hours prior, and they give you the option of changing your seat, so I figured I’d try out a window seat on the way there and take an aisle seat on the way back.
I was shocked at the smoothness of the take-off and we barely hit any rough air during the flight. The landing was also pretty smooth. The only thing that kind of freaked me out were the number of (what felt like) sharp turns taking off from JFK.
Here’s where Delta loses some points in my book. Apparently, and I admittedly did not know this, but Arizona does not abide by daylight savings time. They just never change the clocks, and it is the only state that does this. Apparently Delta didn’t know about this either, because we arrived in Phoenix at 9pm, almost an hour early. Because of this, my ride was not there. When I called customer service, they claim that we “made up an hour in the air”, which is complete hogwash. I’d buy that if we were 20 minutes early, but I’ve never heard of a flight being an hour early, if you have, please let me know.
My flight back to New York was a red-eye, leaving Phoenix at 10:50 pm and arriving back in NYC at 6:20 am. I checked in and tried to get an entire row to myself, which I did. This time, when I boarded, I was pleasantly surprised to see each seat had it’s own personal screen, something my first plane didn’t have. I was even more pleasantly surprised to see their entertainment selection; I bought the Louis CK “Shameless” HBO special for $1.99 (well worth it in my opinion). When that was over, I tried to sleep but I maybe slept for 5 minutes. The seatbelt light was on the whole flight and we were in turbulence/rough air for 90% of the flight, no exaggeration. The bumps were way more noticeable on this flight. I couldn’t help but think of this Louis C.K. bit about flying after this whole experience (warning: lots of profanity.)
Apparently Delta is one of the highest rated airline services, however their inconsistency and lack of customer service is a bit unsettling. I’d probably fly Delta again just because of the pure incompetency of their competitors, however my next flight is going to be on JetBlue.
Have you had any good or bad experiences flying with Delta? Let me know about your experience or if you have any suggestions for other airlines.
