BlogWorld was a success for me. I’m going to be making some changes on the site over the next few weeks that I think will benefit all of you, my readers. But first I need to sift through all the different things I learned. As they say, watch this space.

Since I flew Southwest out to the conference, I thought I would fly the other blog-loving airline home – Delta. They’ve been developing their LAX hub with a bunch of RJs, but I was surprised to see they had a 737 flying from Vegas to LAX at just the right time. Giddyup.

November 9, 2007
Delta #741 Lv Las Vegas (LAS) 625p Arr Los Angeles (LAX) 739p
LAS: Gate D40, Runway 25R, Dept :01E
LAX: Gate 50B, Runway 25L, Arr :02L
Aircraft: N3763D, Boeing 737-800, Wavy Gravy Colors, ~95% full
Flight Time: 48m

07_11_13 dlkiosknoworkAfter my last bad experience flying Delta out of Las Vegas (it’s a long story), I wanted to make sure I was checked in on-time and ready to go. I went on my phone to check-in and had no trouble at all, though I couldn’t see an option to change my seat. When I arrived at the convention center that morning, I was happy to see they had a check-in kiosk that I could use to actually print my boarding pass. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Every time I started, it would just tell me to go see an agent. Riiiiight. Lots of agents at the convention center.

I darted out of the last session at the conference and walked in to the airport at 530p. As you might expect on a Friday, there weren’t too many people in line to leave Vegas. I checked in easily. Security, however, was a different story. The D gates had one line open for the masses and one for the elites. It wasn’t moving. So they started pulling people out into the secondary screening line that had the “puffer” equipment. I jumped at the chance to get out of the main line and made it through in 12 minutes.

I arrived at the gate a few minutes before boarding and everything was on time. When I boarded, I did a quick flip of my head to see if I could catch the registration number over the door (yes, I’m a dork who keeps track of that), but it wasn’t there. The flight attendant saw me and asked if he could help me find something. I told him I was looking for the registration, and he offered to let me go up to the cockpit to find out. Very cool.

Once finished with that, I headed back to my seat. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), this wasn’t the one 737 that has been refitted with in seat video. I took my window seat in the back and looked around to see a nearly full plane. I was surprised how full it was, but I heard a handful of people talking about how they were connecting to New York through LAX. This must have been the cheap option.

We pushed back on time and during the taxi out, someone’s text message alert went off. Two seconds later, the flight attendant gets on the horn and says with her friendly yet stern southern drawl, “Whoever just received a text message on your Nokia phone, you’ll need to turn that off.” Needless to say, we didn’t hear another text message come in after that.

We took off, and headed toward LAX. I was very happy to see that they haddlsnack airshow on for the entire flight so I could watch our quick progress. The seat belt sign stayed on the whole time since it was a little bumpy, but the flight attendants did a quick service with peanuts and a mini bottle of water. I love the mini bottle because you can stick it in the seatback pocket, and the flight attendants won’t force you to give it to them when they clean up.

Soon, it was time to land and we taxied in to our gate. Overall, Delta did a great job on this short hop. The flight attendants were great, very friendly, and surprisingly attentive. It was the end of their day, so I wouldn’t have expected to see such enthusiasm. Nice work, Delta.

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