The Spirit of Delta

Note: This entry was written while at LAX, but posted in Moorea.

So I was going to post this entry while I had a six hour layover at Los Angeles (LAX) but the wireless cost $10 for a day, so I decided to save my money. I had thought the Miami airport was hell on earth, but it appears that LAX has usurped that title. It is just miserable. I had to leave the airport and drive around the parking lot to switch from the domestic to the international terminal. It took me nearly 3 hours to finally get to the gate I was leaving from. Pure misery!

Anyways, the flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles was actually pretty eventful for a plane trip. I got on and the flight attendant kept saying over the loudspeaker “Thanks for joining us on this very special day for us.” Now I know I'm special, but come on. I was seated in the back of the plane and the door was open so snow kept blowing in at me for the first 15 minutes. Not that fun. Finally, though, we got back to why it was such a special day for Delta. As it turns out, the plane that I was on was the first new Delta plane in something like 6 years, and this was its inaugural flight. The flight model was the same plane that flew the world record for longest distance, from Hong Kong to London, the LONG way. Now THAT would be a miserable flight to be on. I think this was the first commercial flight of this type of airplane.

So apparently, there were a ton of people on the flight who had come specifically to fly on this inaugural airplane. Who does that? People who have too much money and too much time on their hands, I guess. What do you get to Los Angeles, and then hop on the next regular plane back home? Anyways, I'll continue. There was an off duty pilot, a bunch of flight attendants in training, and a few airline engineers on board. When I heard it was the first time this plane had ever flown, I was actually pretty unhappy about it. I kept thinking, “Titanic was on its inaugural trip too...” It turns out that the only problems we had were that the TVs weren't working at the beginning of the trip (every person had their own television in the seat in front of them) but the engineers got it fixed. The TV system was pretty nice; the TVs were touch screen, and you could choose television shows to watch, or movies, or music, or games. Some of the new release movies and games cost money, but the TV shows were free, so I watched them. There was also a problem with some passenger, the flight attendants kept asking the passengers if anyone spoke German or Dutch. As far as I saw, there were no takers. What a sorry commentary on the state of foreign language education in America.

It was a pretty classy airplane. The first class was pretty luxe, they had seats that were in individual pods, and the seats turned into beds. Even our bathroom had wood floors. No food though except for a snack class, which wasn't fantastic since it was a five hour long flight.

Anyways, they gave a big speech at the end about how this airplane was so special, and that Delta fought to keep Delta their Delta, and that the CFO had christened it a few days before the “Spirit of Delta” and it was probably in part my exhaustion and my motion sickness from the endless turbulence, but I actually got a little teary eyed. Over an airplane.

The airplane is mainly going to be used for its Asian routes, so maybe one day you will be heading with Delta to Asia and you too will ride this magical airplane that “is for all of the Delta employees.”

Anyways, more interesting stuff later, I'm sure.