My wife and I had to do a quick trip up to San Francisco for a Saturday night event. Fares were high, and schedule options were fewer than I’d expected. In the end, the best flights involved flying into San Francisco and out of Oakland. This gave me a great opportunity to compare the commute, but I’ll do that on Monday. For now, let’s talk about the somewhat unimpressive flight experiences themselves.
Long Beach times didn’t work for our return, frustratingly, so we looked at LAX on the roundtrip. I had a Delta credit expiring, so it was a perfect opportunity to burn it on the $168.50 one way fare. For the return, Southwest hit the sweet spot on timing that allowed us to not get up too early but still get home when we needed it for $154.98 each. I can see why both Frontier and Spirit are growing intra-California flying. These prices are really high.
This was my first time flying out of the re-done Terminal 3. It’s much nicer than it was before the rebuild, but Delta’s flight distribution was weird. The east side of the big room was empty while the west side was overflowing with people and flights. It felt very crowded and chaotic.
I sat and ate my nearly $20 sandwich from Homeboy Cafe, waiting for boarding to begin. That happened very early, 40 minutes before departure on this 737-900ER. We were in group 5.
Delta 2267
June 29, 2024
From Los Angeles
➤ Scheduled Departure: 1210p
➤ Actual Departure: 1221p
➤ From Gate: 34B
➤ Wheels Up: 1234p
➤ From Runway: 24R
To San Francisco
➤ Wheels Down: 124p
➤ On Runway: 28L
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 134p
➤ Actual Arrival: 131p
➤ At Gate: C5
Aircraft
➤ Type: Boeing 737-932ER
➤ Delivered: May 7, 2019
➤ Registered: N926DZ, msn 63534
➤ Livery: Standard Delta Livery
Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 26A
➤ Load: 100% Full
➤ Flight Time: 50m
This airplane was pretty dirty on the outside, made more striking by the relatively clean and new sticker full of awards the company has received. (It really should have the Cranky Network Awards on there, don’t you think?) There was also the false promise of faster, free wi-fi, but that sticker was clearly much more worn. It was also full of lies.
On the inside, the airplane looked to be in good shape. It’s a good thing, or Chase Rumley would have been pretty upset. After all, he has a reputation to uphold on his plane.
A nice functioning TV screen awaited me. I opened the window shade and… yikes was it really dirty. Not cool, Delta.
We were ready to push back on-time, but then we didn’t. I had no idea why, but then I saw this airplane departing.
I’m guessing Kamala slowed us down. We did push back and then… what the heck was that safety video I just watched? Why are we in an upscale jungle? As my wife said, this feels on-brand when Air NZ does something to showcase the country, but for Delta, this was just weird.
Remember how I said there was something that made Delta feel more premium than others when I flew to San Jose in May? None of that applied on this flight.
The flight attendants came through with a limited service of water, tea, or coffee only. Then we were asked “chips or cookies?” There was no further description, and the flight attendant seemed a little annoyed when I asked her to repeat what she had said since I didn’t hear it the first time. Maybe SkyWest is the one who deserved the kudos from my May trip, not Delta.
This was the first flight I’d been on with Delta that had free wifi available… except it didn’t work. After some wrestling, I was able to connect to the network, but I could never get to deltawifi.com to actually get signed in. (And yes, I tried both https and http.)
I gave up and watched Men in Black on TV, occasionally staring out the window to see stunning views like this overhead of Monterey.
We landed at Delta’s usual C gates at SFO which it appears are now considered a part of Terminal 2 along with the D gates. When we walked off, we had to leave by heading to the right and over to D. Along the way, I noticed… nothing.
Now that Alaska has moved out to Terminal 1, it looks like D gates are now only Air Canada, Breeze, and an occasional United flight. It. Was. Deserted.
We headed out toward BART and a spectacular weather day in the city. My wife had a free night certificate expiring in a couple months, so we used that at the Hyatt Centric in Fisherman’s Wharf. If you’re a Fox News-watcher, you probably think San Francisco is a hell-hole. Turn off your TV and book a ticket. It’s still a great place to visit.
After a lovely evening, the return did not start well. I got an alert from Southwest that we were about 45 minutes late. I jumped online to see if we could make an earlier flight, but it was too late at that point for most. The one option we could have done was sold out.
After getting ready, we headed out to try to find our way through the traffic. See, we hadn’t realized this when we booked, but that day was San Francisco Pride, and the parade ran right down Market St making life a little challenging. We were hoping to take the F train to BART, but the F wasn’t running at all. So, we opted instead to do my first ride in a Waymo self-driving car.
The future is now. Other than having trouble getting it to stop in the right place to pick us up, this was a great experience. If you haven’t tried it, I recommend giving it a shot. It kind of blows your mind to see it in action.
We did get on BART after Waymo dropped us off and headed over to Oakland. We were still expected to be about 45 minutes late, but I was watching the airplane get out of San Diego slowly and figured it would be closer to an hour delay at best.
The airplane did arrive, but then Southwest was terribly slow at turning the airplane around. I feel like this has become par for the course over my last few flights, and it is frustrating. In this case, boarding was painfully slow. I know there were a fair number of wheelchairs, but nobody seemed to be in a hurry in the gate area.
Southwest 2362
June 30, 2024
From Oakland
➤ Scheduled Departure: 1130a
➤ Actual Departure: 1252p
➤ From Gate: 20
➤ Wheels Up: 103p
➤ From Runway: 30
To Los Angeles
➤ Wheels Down: 157p
➤ On Runway: 24R
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 1255p
➤ Actual Arrival: 203p
➤ At Gate: 16
Aircraft
➤ Type: Boeing 737-7H4
➤ Delivered: June 26, 2008
➤ Registered: N924WN, msn 36628
➤ Livery: Hot Dog on a Stick
Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 2A
➤ Load: 100% Full
➤ Flight Time: 54m
We were surprised to find that 2A and B were empty, but it meant having the woman in the aisle stand up to let us in, and she was not very mobile. Still, the flight was full, so we knew she’d have to get up one way or the other.
At this point, we found the only person who seemed to want to get this thing moving quickly: Beth. Beth was the flight attendant working up front and making announcements. She was like a carry-on ninja, asking for regular updates from the back, making regular announcements as people boarded, and managing it perfectly to the point where there was no last minute trouble.
She had blocked off the first bin knowing that people in the bulkhead would need to put something up there. And she continued to give warnings to people about what they needed to do so we didn’t take a further delay. It was a thing of beauty to watch her work, and I made sure to send a compliment on Southwest’s website afterwards.
We were ready to push back already having lost a few minutes on the turn, but we had to do a ground start on the engines. In the end, we were a lot later than we should have been.
Once we started moving, the pilots clearly were ready to go and taxied fast. It was another postcard perfect day to fly around the Bay Area.
We hit some light chop at altitude, but it was a very quick ride and we were descending shortly after reaching altitude. This is good, because as on the way up, I couldn’t get internet to work.
After having a ginger ale and some salty death mix, I was ready to be home. We did make some time up during the flight, but we were still over an hour late. After landing, we walked back over to get the car.
Neither of these flights was particularly impressive, though maybe Delta was suffering from higher expectations. The limited onboard service and lack of functioning wifi that was advertised on the side of the airplane annoyed me. With Southwest, I had hoped for just an on-time flight but that wasn’t to be either. This makes me fourth flight in a row on Southwest that’s left at least 15 minutes late.
34 comments on “Delta and Southwest Underwhelm on a Quick Bay Area Trip (Trip Report)”
No doubt, Delta is the best managed airline in the US, but it is a trunk carrier that serves moldy chicken, features over-crowded cafeterias doubling as premium lounges, flies incredibly old airplanes, and has an outsized, inflated perception of its brand ethos. Today’s earnings will likely rein in the arrogance, just a tad.
Those dirty planes as well as everything else you mentioned is by design.
Delta could choose spend even just a little bit of money to make the experience just that much better, but they choose not to.
And, they definitely won’t now. It would cut into their Net Income & stockholder returns. If they were to add any costs that did that, they could be facing the Elliott group in short order.
I’m curious if employee staffing, procedures or just what have made turns on all airlines worse?
The non-functioning wi-fi is a pet peeve of mine. I realize that it is not a true necessity, but I’m not a fan of offering/advertising something a company doesn’t deliver.
As a soon-to-be former loyal Delta Platinum Medallion (thanks Ed) I have noticed that some of the newer FA’s are more focused on the cell phones than providing the level of service that Delta is known for. And some of their older planes are flying pieces of crap.
WN taxi speeds are fast whether they’re an hour late or 10-minutes early.
Southwest Flight Ops has an inflated view of what happens on the ground during a delay. The ground teams are incapable of turning an aircraft in 45 minutes, so why announce the new departure time as such? What ever happened to 30 minute turns? Didn’t we have a run at 10 minute turns (more than a few years ago)? Someone should use some of WNs fancy new software to analyze initial delay ETDs with actual departure times, because anecdotally I have NEVER been on a WN flight that left anywhere close to its initially declared delayed ETD (yes I know “E” stands for estimated, but let’s get close, okay).
BTW, still LUV WN, just let’s do better, thanks
30 minute turns dont happen because:
– Planes carry more people (Max 8 is 175 pax)
– More people are playing the wheelchair game for early boarding
All these airlines advertise wifi and few deliver. Delta’s wifi SUCKS. So do the ones in most Eagle flights, and most Southwest flights.
I will say that American’s wifi on mainline jets works pretty well. However, you never know when it’s an old US Air plane with dial up internet that is too slow to even text.
I guess the US comment was true with the E190s around a few years ago but all AA mainline planes, Ex-US or Ex-AA, are using the same satellite high speed internet these days (the LAA A319s have a different provider though; maybe the A321T too, I forgot). Even the A320s
They still have some 319 and 321s from the old US airplanes or maybe even America West that has the old gogo that doesn’t work very well.
Was on one yesterday in fact.
Cranky just shows how much of a commodity domestic airlines has become between the big 4. The prices are similar so the experience in main cabin will be similar.
Intra-California where WN is mostly O&D and has no basic econ product makes it like shootin fish in a barrel for NK and F9. No wonder they keep piling on. That market doesn’t have a ton of checked bags and is mostly short flights. Works well for ULCCs (kinda like WN in the past ran US and AA and sort of UA out of intra-CA).
Similar environment to Europe I suppose where Ryanair et al have a comprehensive P2P network, somewhat similar to Southwest and their P2P networks. Average stage length is much shorter over there too.
Yeah but now it’s WN who doesn’t have the product able to profitably compete on price. Watterson admitted recently they have faltered in administering their new RM system. They are selling far too many tickets are too low of fares (and they keep having fare sales every week now… most recently for travel in the next two weeks). Their only way to compete with the likes of Spirit and Frontier (and Avelo even in CA) is to dump low fares out there. Even Alaska is running circles around them with its own Basic/Saver product.
DL been living on past success for years. Their planes are old, wifi is slow and often doesn’t work (aka why it’s free) and service is generally average to poor. Plus the boarding is a joke. SW just sucks and and has for the past 10 years, avoid them like the plaque. Give me AA and AK anyday.
AK? I don’t think AK does domestic flights.
Also, I flew AA a couple months and the flight attendants were super rude, the food was mediocre, and the Wi-Fi was expensive and you don’t get free texting. AA is my airline of last resort.
Delta is mostly fine to me. No US airline is perfect. Delta isn’t giving the Wi-Fi away for free because it sucks. It’s a different system and it works better then the its predecessor.
Always
SkyWest tends to impress. They’re my favorite regional operator by far and generally uphold the mainline standards.
Have flown both airlines over the years, and I think I have somewhat of a perspective of how they are now….
For Southwest, I remember taking WN on multi-city hop flights (like BWI-BNA-LIT-OKC and they’d turn those intermediate stops around in less than 30 minutes. Little Rock was less than 20 and we were off again. It was quite a thing to behold. Then again, this was 25 years ago. They aren’t the same airline anymore. As pointed out elsewhere, larger planes and the wheelchair scam have contributed to WN being not-so-nimble any more.
On the other hand, DL kinda is the same airline as they were 25 years ago. This halo reputation as somehow being more premium than the other guys while really being no better most of the time. I think the deal with them (then and now) is that they have some killer hard product on newer planes and they have some awesome crews on some routes. But whether you get that experience or not is a random shuffle of the cards, Flew a couple of A220 flights on DL last year (MKE-BOS, ORD-BOS-ORD) and both were indeed quite impressive experiences. Beautiful aircraft, fine crews, and Comfort = seating at a bargain of less than $10 extra per seat! But, I’ve had other flights where DL were no better than AA. Which is a slam, btw.
FWIW, I fly UA a lot – they rarely seem premium in any way but I also never have problems with them either. My experience is that they deliver what they promised. Unless Wisconsin Air or Sky West are involved…..then anything can happen.
Brett – I must say its very refreshing that you travel like the rest of us. Eating the overpriced sandwiches in the overly crowded terminal, instead of the the terrible pasta in the overcrowded lounges financed by Credit Card Annual fees.
Your trip reports are honest and true. Carry on good sir… and please explain to me the art of convincing the Mrs to take the middle seat so I can look out the window.
Ha, I actually offered it to her, but she usually just falls asleep and knows how much I like looking out. So she tends to not care all that much!
Vice President Harris married a man who lives in Los Angeles. The Air Force frequently brings her out to her house here from Washington, D.C.. Biden comes out here to Los Angeles, once in awhile.
I visited several neighborhoods in San Francisco last month–I did not observe any crime or other problems, although once I did observe a couple of federal police cars racing towards some emergency across town.
$325 isn’t a lot for a 400 mi roundtrip! I’m here for all the “DL stinks” commentary, but where’s Tim Dunn to refute it????
I don’t refute people’s individual experiences.
The non-functioning wifi on two airlines is surprising as is the dirty cabin on DL. Using today’s aircraft routing, that plane flies most of its day going up and down the west coast. The same WN aircraft on a recent day flies BNA-HOU-ABQ-
The beverage/snack service is what DL offers on short-haul flights.
Delta managed to be on time which is what they do better than others. Southwest struggles to be on-time with full loads.; an hour delay at noon given how hard WN is pushing its fleet helps explain why their on-time has suffered.
Since both flights were completely full in the middle of the summer and fares were high even as Delta just warned on a softer revenue environment that will certainly impact other airlines worse than DL, you are probably looking at the near to medium term outlook for travel. Hopefully both carriers can polish their operations and delivery but both flights were aberrations in one way or another to how both carriers normally operate.
$325 isn’t a lot for a 400 mi round trip?
I’m not trying to argue, and I’m not saying that $325 for 400 miles RT is always excessive, depending on the particulars (for bookings made less than, say, 14 days out, I wouldn’t bat an eye at it). Without looking at any data, however, if I were booking a leisure trip a month or two in advance for a 400 mile nonstop roundtrip, if I saw fares in the $200-250 for WN/AA/DL/UA I wouldn’t complain about them (not often that I see non-ULCC fares lower than that), but would also be expecting/hoping ULCCs to offer sub-basic economy fares (e.g., without overhead bin space) for even less. That said, this trip was between two major metro areas, and that may have driven prices up as well; I’m not sure how bad the airports’ pax charges are or how they compare to those from smaller airports in their metro areas.
Fares don’t scale with distance well at all, but basic economy fares in the $250-350 round trip range for trips of 800-1500 miles are not hard to find, especially on trips to/from more leisure focused markets. For Northeast to FL, the market I’m most familiar with, I’d consider a basic economy RT fare of $325 with all fees to be mediocre, not great, except for peak travel seasons (e.g., I jumped quickly on a Thanksgiving fare from Northeast to FL at around $325).
You have a typo in your article. In the paragraph you say “f you haven’t tried it, I recommend giving it a short.” I assume, you weren’t trying to short circuit the car.
I flew Delta SJC-LAX and back in May and the service experience during each direction was vastly different. On the way down, the flight attendants didn’t offer anything. On the way back, they did a full beverage service. I thanked the flight attendants on the way out for both cases. “Thanks for doing nothing” vs “Thanks! Have a nice day.” I think that is based on who is working the flight. If only there was a service standard. Oh wait, there is. Anyway, I’ve flown a few Delta flights with free Wi-Fi a few times and I was impressed with the speed since it’s enough for me to do what I need (edit photos on the cloud). But, it’s never not worked for me. I’d not be happy too.
The 737-900 is my least favorite airplane in Delta’s fleet. It’s packed tight and I barely fit into the lavs.
I am visiting SF later this month. I didn’t know Waymo is open to anyone – thanks for inspiring us a great unique item we can enjoy. Can’t wait to try myself. The hotel I booked (Hampton inn downtown – which I’m now considering changing) still has recent reviews about homeless people and feces on streets. So Fox News and Reddit trolls are probably true only for certain area.
That Hampton Inn is on Mission between 5th and 6th, and yes, I must admit it is in an unfortunate location. However, just walk down Mission to 4th, and take 4th wherever you want to go, and its fine. No one will bother you, just ignore them, its perfectly safe. That Inn is rather new, very nice, and has a fabulous roof deck. Its a great place to stay.
Thanks for your helpful comment!
Hello.
I visited San Francisco in mid-June. I did not go near the Hampton Inn, but the areas which I visited south of Market Street appeared to have no problems with homeless persons, crime, or feces on the streets. I was surprised, I had been watching for Armageddon.
My Amtrak railroad/California Department of Transportation bus came over the Bay bridge from the Oakland area, drove around downtown San Francisco, and let us off on the public sidewalk, near the Salesforce Center terminal, a block south of Market Street. I walked up to Market Street, and entered the south entrance of the Embarcadero subway station. I observed no problems.
A few days later, I rode the newish “T Third Street” public transit light rail train line. I took it from Union Square though the south of Market neighborhood into an area which is further south. On the return trip, I got off in the South of Market Street neighborhood, and went to a grocery store, two blocks south of the train station. (I walked from 4th Street and King Street to 4th Street and Channel Street.) Again, no problems, although the grocery store restrooms were locked, and customers could get the code from an employee.
I also visited Union Square which had been a past problem area. Again, it appeared to be normal. The combined city and county government is fighting problems there with increase police patrols, a mobile police department command post and a park ranger’s vehicle, free concerts every day, etc.
When I left the city, I took a subway to the Embarcadero station, walked from the subway station to the Ferry Building, and caught a ferry. Again, no problems.
I did see 2 United States Park Police cars speeding past the zoo in Southwest San Francisco with sirens and emergency lights. The officers are cross designated to respond to local emergencies and to federal emergencies. They were on the other side of town from the Hampton Inn.
The Tenderloin neighborhood and the Civic Center area might still be having problems with crime and sanitation. I have not observed those areas recently–I only rode underneath them on subway trains. I visited several other northern and western areas in the city, and observed no problems.
Appreciate for sharing that. I’ll be vigil anyway but much more relieved now. Thanks.
I had never heard of a ‘Waymo’ before so googled it.I wonder when they’ll come to the UK?
@Cranky– Just a personal question, how come your backup is always LAX instead of SNA when you can’t get out of LGB? Isn’t SNA better than dealing with 405-N traffic and the disaster that is World Way?
Anthony – For me, LAX tends to be a quicker drive from my side of Long Beach. Traffic between my house and LAX on the 405 is pretty normal rush hour traffic. It’s nothing like the snarled mess that’s north of LAX in West LA. Right now, I just punched it in and it’s 23 minutes from my house to LAX with no traffic but over 30 to Orange County with some slowing.
Sure, the horseshoe is worse, but there are just so many more flight options that it tends to be worth it. Of course, I want LGB first, but otherwise, LAX is the best alternate.