After flying with DL MAN-JFK a few days prior, it was time to head home after an enjoyable few days in NYC. Although our flight wasn't until 9.250pm, we arrived at JFK some time after 5pm as we had been advised that the traffic had the potential to be absolutely mental, so we elected to leave plenty of time. It was just as well as the cab ride from Manhattan took about 75mins alone with the driver detouring through various estates en route to JFK.
Shortly after arriving at T4 a lady from Delta assisted us with using the kiosks to check-in. A minor farce then ensued when we discovered that we had been split up and would be sat on different rows. I spotted it when the lady was doing the check-in procedure for us, but as she was doing it too fast I didn't have the time to interject until the boarding passes had been printed. As the flight was fully booked, the lady couldn't change our seats without paying $99 per person to upgrade to Economy Comfort (I had looked into this previously and ruled it out on the grounds of poor value) and advised us to enquire at the gate.
Although frustrated about this, we accepted the boarding passes for now and dropped our suitcases off at the bag drop desk before proceeding through security which was completed quite quickly. As we were early, we had something to eat/drink and bought a bit of duty free before heading down to the gate. When we got there, a flight for Madrid was boarding, so we waited until the staff there had completed the boarding process for the Madrid flight before seeing if we could sort the seats out. There were 2 ladies working behind the counter and the first one who served us didn't want to know and palmed us off saying that we can only change once they had updated the screens to show the Manchester flight, so we sat back down again. When the signs changed, we went back to the counter and the same 2 ladies were there, but this time her colleague served us. We explained the situation again and, with a smile, she changed the seats and printed off new boarding passes so we were now sat together - great!
Once that was sorted, I had a wander around and noticed that the 757 that took us out a few days before, N712TW, was boarding to operate a transcon flight to LAX, so this meant I would be on a different 757. The inner avgeek within me was slightly excited at that prospect! Shortly afterwards, N717TW arrived on stand having operated a transcon from SFO and would operate our flight back to Manchester.
With less than an hour to go, boarding started and was completed efficiently with 15mins to go. As a result, we were slightly early off stand. The captain did an announcement welcoming us on board and said that the flight time would be just over 6hrs and that the crew would be serving us dinner and breakfast. By that point, I was completely shattered, so shortly after take-off I unfurled the blanket, put on the eye masks and QC25 headphones and drifted off to a shallow sleep. As I wasn't hungry, I skipped dinner (and breakfast 5hrs later) and shallow slept pretty much all the way back to Manchester. I woke up when the crew announced that we had begun our descent and we landed just after 8.40am. Due to MAN being busy, it wasn't for another 20mins or so before we were on stand, however when we got to the stand we were still 20mins ahead of schedule.
After disembarking, it was straight through immigration and thankfully the bags didn't take an eternity to come through before being collected to head home.
Overall, it was another good flight with Delta. The major issues with this flight was the aforementioned issues with 2 members of the ground staff at JFK, but everyone else who we dealt with from DL including the on-board crew were excellent. It was good to see both the outbound and return legs being so busy which justifies DL reinstating the MAN-JFK route and is hopefully evidence of the VS/DL joint venture in action. I see that the route is doing so well that from late-March 2016 the route is being up-gauged to a 763.
Based on this, I would fly with DL again, especially if they continue to operate out of MAN alongside VS.
Shortly after arriving at T4 a lady from Delta assisted us with using the kiosks to check-in. A minor farce then ensued when we discovered that we had been split up and would be sat on different rows. I spotted it when the lady was doing the check-in procedure for us, but as she was doing it too fast I didn't have the time to interject until the boarding passes had been printed. As the flight was fully booked, the lady couldn't change our seats without paying $99 per person to upgrade to Economy Comfort (I had looked into this previously and ruled it out on the grounds of poor value) and advised us to enquire at the gate.
Although frustrated about this, we accepted the boarding passes for now and dropped our suitcases off at the bag drop desk before proceeding through security which was completed quite quickly. As we were early, we had something to eat/drink and bought a bit of duty free before heading down to the gate. When we got there, a flight for Madrid was boarding, so we waited until the staff there had completed the boarding process for the Madrid flight before seeing if we could sort the seats out. There were 2 ladies working behind the counter and the first one who served us didn't want to know and palmed us off saying that we can only change once they had updated the screens to show the Manchester flight, so we sat back down again. When the signs changed, we went back to the counter and the same 2 ladies were there, but this time her colleague served us. We explained the situation again and, with a smile, she changed the seats and printed off new boarding passes so we were now sat together - great!
Once that was sorted, I had a wander around and noticed that the 757 that took us out a few days before, N712TW, was boarding to operate a transcon flight to LAX, so this meant I would be on a different 757. The inner avgeek within me was slightly excited at that prospect! Shortly afterwards, N717TW arrived on stand having operated a transcon from SFO and would operate our flight back to Manchester.
With less than an hour to go, boarding started and was completed efficiently with 15mins to go. As a result, we were slightly early off stand. The captain did an announcement welcoming us on board and said that the flight time would be just over 6hrs and that the crew would be serving us dinner and breakfast. By that point, I was completely shattered, so shortly after take-off I unfurled the blanket, put on the eye masks and QC25 headphones and drifted off to a shallow sleep. As I wasn't hungry, I skipped dinner (and breakfast 5hrs later) and shallow slept pretty much all the way back to Manchester. I woke up when the crew announced that we had begun our descent and we landed just after 8.40am. Due to MAN being busy, it wasn't for another 20mins or so before we were on stand, however when we got to the stand we were still 20mins ahead of schedule.
After disembarking, it was straight through immigration and thankfully the bags didn't take an eternity to come through before being collected to head home.
Overall, it was another good flight with Delta. The major issues with this flight was the aforementioned issues with 2 members of the ground staff at JFK, but everyone else who we dealt with from DL including the on-board crew were excellent. It was good to see both the outbound and return legs being so busy which justifies DL reinstating the MAN-JFK route and is hopefully evidence of the VS/DL joint venture in action. I see that the route is doing so well that from late-March 2016 the route is being up-gauged to a 763.
Based on this, I would fly with DL again, especially if they continue to operate out of MAN alongside VS.