The gate agent was nice enough to add McCown to the list…here’s a note we had jotted down mid-flight:

Well, off to a good start. When leaving Charleston, we both got an upgrade to Altanta-ATL. Well Delta, how many Bloody Marys can I suck down in 43 mins of flying time? 3. The answer is 3. Hope you didn’t think that was rhetorical.

BOARDING

Once in Atlanta, we made our way over from Terminal B, one of Delta’s main domestic terminals to Terminal E, the old international terminal, which is still operating some foreign flights. Despite being the World’s busiest airport by passenger traffic, Atlanta-ATL is always a breeze to navigate and, despite the low ceilings and aging design, quite a functional airport.

We made it on over to our gate, E12, with plenty of time of spare before the 9:56pm scheduled boarding time–but also not quite enough time to go to the Delta SkyClub (free with the American Express Platinum card and free for SkyTeam Elite Plus, via Delta Gold Medallion status). We instead waited around to see if we could try our luck with another sympathetic gate agent for an upgrade to BusinessElite. This proved to be a waste of time. I approached the gate when a younger looking, hopefully reasonable Delta agent was there and free and, right as I got to the stand, her older and much crabbier colleague walked up to relieve her. She was extremely unimpressed that I was bothering her with an upgrade, especially after she discovered that we were traveling on an award ticket. Oh well, good thing I have no shame.

Sarcastic rant: But seriously, why didn’t you give me an upgrade that I don’t deserve for free?!

In Delta’s, and everyone’s really, defense, we’re already doing pretty well, given that we booked an award ticket, i.e. paid just taxes on the flight (around $110) and everyone else is paying $1200+ for discounted economy and others much, much more … and we’re literally PISSED OFF that Delta does’t want to give us a free upgrade to BusinessElite. Some people. But, then again, and in our defense, economy sucks and we’re just not accustomed to it. How do you expect me to sleep on anything other than a fully FLAT bed? I digress…

Boarding started a bit late (probably closer to 10:15pm) as maintenance was still working on cleaning the aircraft from the last flight.

I would say that the worst part of boarding this Delta Boeing 767-300ER when flying economy is that the boarding door is directly behind the cockpit, so we had the pleasure of walking past all of the BusinessElite-rs getting settled into their awesome-looking seats. The only redeeming factor of this depressing, envy-inspiring march was that we got a great look at the B767-300ER’s newly refurbished premium cabin and have some pics of it:

Great view of where we wouldn’t be spending the next 10+ hours

I hope whoever sits here has a horrible flight

Delta Boeing 767-300ER BusinessElite

Delta Boeing 767-300ER Economy Comfort

We made it back to ours seats, 23 F&G, right of the wing on the right side of the plane. Again, painful that I have a clear eyesight of both BusinessElite and Economy Comfort, both of which Delta doesn’t want to give this Gold Medallion member a shot at. But, not due to lack of trying or raw effort.

The Delta app was showing ~80+ seats available in economy as we boarded, which means plenty of room to spread out. Worried that we’d pick the wrong “empty seat” and then be booted (it has sort of happened before with unfavorable results on our Turkish Airlines flight from Washington to Istanbul), we decided to just be happy that we had a window and an aisle and just relax.

THE SEAT

The seat is part of they newly refurbished Boeing 767-300ER fleet. This means brand new seats, entertainment system, etc….

I’m not ready for a formal accusation Delta, but the new “slimline” seats most definitely feel like they’ve robbed me of an inch or two of leg room. But, I was willing to look past it as I was distracted by the new, great looking IFE system. Between the new IFE, a USB port at every seat and a power plug at 1 in 2 or 1 in 3 seats, I was a happy camper.

Call me crazy, but the seats do seem less comfortable than I remember. To sound like a total jackass, it has been a while since we’ve flown in international coach, but these things seem like they’re lacking a bit of cushion?

The good news: exit row seats = a ton of leg room. The bad new: the horrible armrest that doesn’t budge

Our non-exit row seating, looks tight…

Economy cabin of Delta’s B767-300ER, configuration is 2x3x2

Economy Comfort was mostly empty, and, right as we were eyeing a quick move to the seats with more legroom, we saw a woman get kicked out by one of the flight attendants–guess they take that section pretty seriously. It then became evident as to why when they walked around the cabin attempting to sell upgrades to the E+ cabin. I didn’t bother to ask how much they would be, and apparently no one else in our shoes did either as there was no movement after their sales pitch. It’s tough to sell upgrades to people who are enjoying a relatively empty cabin; I mean, those who were lucky enough to snag an entire middle row of 3 seats to themselves have it almost as good as the business class cabin.

IN-FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

As I mentioned above, the entertainment system refresh was a good one. We had a fairly large touchscreen at our disposal with 1x power plugs per 2 seats and a USB at every seat. The one awkward part of the newly designed IFE is that the headphone jack plug in is at the screen, not at the armrest, meaning you’ll have to unplug every time your neighbor needs to pass over you. It also makes sleeping with the music on a bit more difficult.

I can see you from back here, BusinessElite. Can we close the curtains already?!

USB and headphone jack below every LCD

1 power plug per our 2 seats

At 10:45pm of our 10:41pm departure, forward boarding door was closed. By 10:46pm, we pushed back from gate and we had a wheels up time of 10:58pm — enroute to Santiago-SCL!

About 30 mins after take off (around 11:17pm), the flight attendants came around to distribute hot towels–ok, well really more like a luke warm paper towel. A half hour after that (appx 1 hour after pushing back from the gate, at 11:43pm), the dinner and drink service had arrived.

DINNER

The dinner options (no printed menu for this flight) consisted of a “hot chicken dish with rice, pasta or a cold Southwest salad.” We glanced at our neighbors’ and got a waft of the chicken, which actually smelled delicious and both opted for the same choice. It had a great flavor, sort of Southwest with lots of cumin?… and something that made it a little sweet. Steamed white rice was served in the middle and a blend of corn, lima beans and red peppers on the side. In McCown’s own words, “the food was the best airplane (economy) food I’ve had in recent memory….a very flavorful chicken and rice dish with vegetables and a decent chicken meat (not sketchy what-the-heck-is-that-really? cuts). It filled me up and left me ready to fall asleep … and what more can you ask for with an airplane meal?”

Dinner: hot entree + salad + bread + dessert

The “hot chicken dish,” actually quite good with a great Southwest-style flavor….

I had totally forgotten that Delta has started offering complimentary wine, beer and spirits on long-haul international flights and was pleasantly surprised to save some cash on the wine. I guess I was under the impression that Delta started giving it out for free on Transatlantic  and Transpacific routes but somehow discounted the South American service. Either way, it was a nice touch and a step in the right direction from the “race to the bottom” that most airlines are going through in a quest to improve their bottom line at all costs.

BREAKFAST

Some time around 12:30am, about 1 hr 45 mins after takeoff, our meal was cleared and the cabin lights dimmed. As always, the cabin lights were back on way too soon, but a heavy sleeper would have been able to get a solid 6.5 hours of sleep–not terrible at all.

The breakfast was announced at takeoff to be served “appx 1.5 hours before landing” and, by 7am, the cabin’s lights were on and, just a few minutes later, the flight attendants had rushed around and distributed most of the breakfast trays.

Breakfast consisted of a small tray complete with a warm egg and pepper jack cheese croissant, Yoplait Greek Yogurt and a few ounces of OJ. The breakfast sandwich actually had a good bit of kick to it and wasn’t anything to complain about. Again, bravo on the food service, Delta.

By this point, we were quite close to Santiago and began descending as we made our approach.

Touch down was smooth and we had a quick taxi over to the gate. Despite the slightly delayed departure, we arrived in Santiago a few minutes before our scheduled time of 8:15am.

Next stop: customs. The best news? No more $160 reciprocity fee for US Citizens visiting Chile!

BOTTOM LINE: Free booze and a decent entertainment system made this flight abroad Delta’s new-ish B767-300ER long-haul service seem bearable–almost enough to make me overlook the reduced legroom with the “enhanced” seats.

The post Delta Flight 147 – Atlanta-ATL to Santiago-SCL – B767-300ER first appeared on Weekend Blitz.

…it must be a sign

We made it to Dulles from our connecting flight with about 3 hrs to kill before takeoff. I had a few United Club passes that I wanted to use before they expired, but we wanted to stay in Terminal B. Unfortunately, you’re out of luck when it comes to United Clubs in Terminal B.

Image source: airchive.com

The next best bet is using Priority Pass to gain entry to the “BRITISH AIRWAYS GALLERIES LOUNGE,” located in Terminal B. This would have been perfect if it weren’t for this caveat, listed on the PriorityPass website:

Opening Hours: 07:00 – 14:00 daily. Cardholders will not be admitted to the Lounge outside these hours.

So, again, no club. Guess we’ll have to slum it with common folk. We posted up at one of the restaurants to kill the time:

From: McCown
To: Family/Friends

Hello from our first leg of the trip! We are having dinner/we’re not really sure which meal to get on our new time schedule. We board the plane in about an hour. Here’s the bad news: we booked our seats with a seat in between us hoping to get the whole row to ourselves. We’ve just found out that the plane is completely booked. Looks like I’m facing another 10+ hour plane trip stuck in the middle.

Here’s a pic of us eating dinner.

I think my next few emails will be more entertaining and (hopefully) more visually stimulating.

Turkish Airlines Flight 8 – IAD to IST – Airbus A340-300 -11:25pm to 4:40pm (+1 day)

With takeoff scheduled at 11:25pm, we moseyed back down to the gate around 10:30pm and boarding was already well underway! We had planned to be the first on the plane in an effort to trade around seats, if possible, but this flight was 100% full!

Example of a Turkish Air A340-300. Source: Wikipedia

The economy cabin is configured as “2 – 4 – 2”. Typically, we would just bite the bullet and take a window and an aisle so as to not have to have any additional passengers right next to us, but, when I booked the seats (just a few weeks prior to departure), the plane appeared to be wide open! So, I used the strategy of booking an aisle and middle seat on one of the sections with 4 seats across in the hopes that we could spread out across the empty seats. Well, no dice on this trip. When I checked the seat map on the day of departure, the cabin was showing 100% capacity! Guess that plan backfired on us.

Turkish Airlines A340-300. Economy cabin: 2 – 4 – 2 configuration

Despite being full, boarding was pretty smooth and painless and we made it back to our seats:

The Seat

The seat was fine. Nothing special, but no complaints either. The interior was nice and relatively new looking. Those bright blue seats are pretty unmistakable for Turkish Airways.

I was just pleased to have personal in-flight entertainment with a decent-sized screen:

The TV/Movies selection, however, left a bit to be desired:

Turkish Airlines New Releases section: “The Man With One Red Shoe” starring Tom Hanks…released in 1985. Let’s hope this isn’t a theme, Turkey

The Food

Immediately after reaching 10,000 feet, the flight attendants came through the cabin distributing menus for the meal services: Dinner then Breakfast:

Dinner and breakfast menu

Dinner consisted of:

• Smoked salmon with horseradish sauce
• “Shepherd salad” with white cheese
• Choice of
  • Grilled kofta with sautéed vegetables and rice
  • Grilled chicken breast with fried eggplants in tomato sauce and polenta
• Apricot cake

The meal service started around 12:10am ~ 45 minutes after takeoff and lasted until appx 1am. I went with the kofta option and found it to be pretty good:

Grilled kofta with sautéed vegetables and rice

Kofta is essentially a grilled lamb meatball of sorts. Turkish Air’s variety had a good flavor, was spiced well and all around delicious. The rice was pretty bland but that’s standard practice for plane food:  serve it bland and you can salt and season yourself. We washed it all down with a mini bottle of Ancyra, a nice red wine from Turkey. Overall, this was a pretty quality meal.

By around 1am EST, the meal service was over and we were able to get about 6.5 hours of (restless) sleep in the economy seats. By 7:15am EST / 2:15pm Istanbul time, the breakfast service was starting. On the menu this time:

• Fresh fruit salad
• Cheese tray: white cheese, cheddar cheese, black olive, tomato and cucumber
• Cheese omelette with grilled tomato and panfried potatoes

Breakfast service: Cheese omelette with potatoes

While ok for economy, the breakfast wasn’t nearly as good as dinner–guess it doesn’t help that it had been sitting in the warmer for the past 8+ hours.

Service

The service was fine. Not too rushed but our flight in Thai Airways economy from Phuket-HKT to Hong Kong-HKG was much better. The Thai Airways staff delivered much more detailed, personal service than Turkish Air. That being said, the Turkish Air service was leaps and bounds better than any US airline’s transatlantic service in economy. But, then again, it could have just been the fact that TK still serves free alcohol on international flights.

The amenity kits were distributed the same time as the menus, right after takeoff:

Decent enough amenity kit

Ear plugs and eye mask–my only hope at any sleep….

We landed at the Istanbul Atatürk Airport on time and were soon on our way through customs. A 90-day visa for Americans cost us $20, payable with USD at the airport. Immigration was a huge cluster and the Eastern European/Turkish line forming has begun with lots of push, shoving and cutting in line. But hey, if you can’t beat em’….

BOTTOM LINE: Turkish Airlines has a pretty good long-haul product. The food, seats and service were all above average and definitely worth flying again. I’d pick TK over Delta or United for transatlantic flights any day.

The post Turkish Air Flight TK 8 – Washington-IAD to Istanbul-IST first appeared on Weekend Blitz.