In a continual effort to improve the products you see in-flight, we’re testing new options for circulation in late 2012 and want to know what amenities are most important to you! We’ll take the information you share here and consider your feedback when we’re planning for new amenities this year.
Thanks for your input! If you have any other suggestions, we’d love to hear them!
Be sure to start looking for new amenities changes in late 2012.
Melissa R.
Onboard Experience
Happy New Year everyone! Since my last update, we’ve gone from one lonely Wi-Fi-equipped regional jet to 134 as of today (Jan. 6, 2012). So now you have more opportunities than ever to keep in touch with work, friends and family, update your status on Facebook, flip through your favorite websites and check your flight status on delta.com (and remember, access to delta.com is ALWAYS free).
Delta and Delta Connection by the numbers—some interesting factoids:
Wi-Fi on RJs also means yourDeltaTravelerPassis now a better value than ever, with unlimited access on all Delta & Delta Connection-equipped flights for just $34.95 a month.
As you can imagine, coordinating installations on multiple fleet types across seven different carriers, while maintaining a very busy flight schedule is quite challenging. That said, I want to thank our Engineering team, the Gogo technical teams responsible for the Wi-Fi installations, and our Delta Connection partners for all their work to get this great product onboard. We’re well on our way to completing the entire two-class RJ fleet of 255 aircraft by this spring.
We hope you like the product upgrades we’re rolling out and as always, your feedback is welcomed and encouraged. We’d love to hear from you!
Chris B.
Sr. Product Manager
Customer Experience
Have you ever wondered where your bags go after they pass through those black rubber flaps at the airport? Well, we rigged a bag with 6 cameras and sent it on its way from Atlanta to New York, just so you could find out! This is an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at some of the people, places and things your bag encounters on its way to get from Point A to Point B.
Interesting, right? And now you can track your own bag’s journey on the Fly Delta app, too. Just take a photo of the tag on your iPhone or enter the bag tag number, and you’re ready to go knowing your bag will get off the plane where you do.
P.S. Haven’t downloaded the Fly Delta app? You can do that here.
Jonathan Mayfield
Delta Mobile Team
Earlier this month Delta employees operated the Santa Express, whisking children away on a fantasy flight to the North Pole to see Santa Claus! The lucky children who got to experience this fun-filled evening were from the El Centro de la Raza and Big Brothers/Big Sisters Program of Puget Sound.
Peter Ruskin and I were asked to be flight leaders of the Santa Express last June. We picked our crew, 8 other flight attendants from theSeattlearea, who all had a special love of helping children. To get ready. we purchased decorations and planned activities for the flight– some of our crew even enlisted their own children (reindeer antlers and blinking red noses) to help out!
We rewrote our safety demonstration to The Night Before Christmas to start out our flight in the Holiday spirit. For ‘take-off,’ our pilots and ground crew made use of a high speed tug that taxied us around the airport and then parked at a remote area where we had lunch and watched two volunteer entertainers sing and play guitar. Our local pilot group purchased copies of If I could Fly An Airplane for each child onboard—they loved it! The book is about a child’s first flight on Delta and was written by A flight attendant, Lauren Lemos who autographed each copy. We read it using the PA for all the kids onboard.
Before ‘landing’ at the snowy and cold North Pole we served hot chocolate and passed out baseball caps for the children to wear and keep their heads warm while visiting Santa.
This flight was all about hope and joy for the children onboard the flight and employees who volunteered their time. As flight attendants, many of us view an airplane as our home in the sky. We view ourselves as a family. To be able to open up our home, decorate it with Christmas cheer and fill it full of excited children was a wonderful dream realized.
We’re happy to share the spirit of the season with this special group of passengers. Have you ever done something to make the holiday season brighter for a group of children? We want to hear your stories.
Susan V.N.
Seattle-based flight attendant
New York is one of the most important markets we serve at Delta, and it has long been our goal to become the preferred airline for customers traveling to and from New York.
And we’ve made a lot of progress in the past decade. We built an international hub at JFK that connects the city to points across the globe, including Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. We broke ground last year on a $1.2 billion expansion and enhancement of Terminal 4 at JFK. And you’re seeing Delta’s name all over the city as the official airline of the Yankees and Mets, the Knicks, the Rangers and Madison Square Garden, just to name a few.
Today marks a new step in our New York expansion, and it’s Delta’s biggest move yet. We’ve unveiled our schedule for 2012 that creates a new domestic hub at LaGuardia Airport. We’ll be adding 100 new daily flights to nearly 30 new cities from LaGuardia. We’re adding new service to top business markets like Miami, Dallas/Fort Worth and Cleveland, and adding or expanding service to small- and mid-sized cities across the country, including Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester, N.Y.; Richmond, Va.; Greensboro, N.C.; and Norfolk, Va.
Many smaller communities will be getting jet service on Delta to LaGuardia, a significant upgrade from smaller, turborprop aircraft that previously served those markets.
Overall, we’ll be adding 4 million new seats every year at LaGuardia. And we can do that without increasing congestion simply by using larger aircraft than other airlines had previously. In the end, our new LGA service will enhance customer choice and increase competition in the market. The U.S. Department of Transportation recently concluded that our New York expansion has significant benefits for consumers – and we strongly agree.
It’s the largest single-carrier expansion in New York in many years, which makes this an exciting and historic day for Delta and our New York customers.
To make sure we can handle all of these new flights smoothly, we’re taking over Terminal C at LaGuardia, and building a 600-foot bridge connecting it with Delta Terminal D. We’ll operate a total of 29 gates at both terminals, and we’re also going to add a new Delta Sky Club in Terminal C, in addition to the newly-renovated one in Terminal D.
Including our six gates at the Marine Air Terminal, we’ll have a total of 35 gates at LaGuardia by summer 2012 – more than double what we operate now.
I’m looking forward to seeing you in New York in 2012!
Gail Grimmett
Senior Vice President –New York