Back to the Bay– let’s try Delta this time

After a long weekend in Baltimore, it was time to head back to the bay. Once again, it seemed to make sense to me to fly back from BWI. The logic was that it would’ve been 90 minutes to Dulles vs 20 minutes to BWI. On the arrival side, I would’ve arrived into SFO instead of OAK, which would’ve been 60 minutes instead of 15. So it made sense to me to try out a BWI-ATL-OAK flight since Delta had recently added service between ATL and OAK. The eastbound OAK-ATL flight is an overnight flight, which I try to avoid, so this seemed like the best time to try it out.

I bought the ticket with cash and then used one of my Regional Upgrade Certificates to upgrade to First Class. With my Delta Platinum status, I may have been able to clear a complimentary upgrade, but my success rate has been somewhat low overall.

The first flight from Baltimore to Atlanta was extremely uneventful. It was on an A321, whereas the second flight would be on a 737. I sat in seat 3C for both legs, and I really couldn’t tell any difference in the experience. The flight was short and on-time, and service was minimal.

I have no complaints about the flight but there really wasn’t much to mention about it, and I spent the entire flight on my laptop, so I didn’t even bother getting a drink.

After arriving in Atlanta, I proceeded directly for the Delta SkyClub. Atlanta is, of course, a huge hub for Delta, and so the airline has many SkyClubs throughout the airport. Some are bigger and/or better than others. I don’t really know what the internal ranking of them is, so I just went to the one that was closest to my connecting flight. It turned out to be huge.

I had heard that the food at SkyClubs is better than in Admirals Clubs and United Clubs. And I can confirm, yes, it definitely is. There was a full buffet with a salad bar:

Sandwiches:

Hummus and crudites:

And several hot options:

I selected a bit of everything, and it was definitely a step up compared to a standard Admirals Club, but it fell well short of the offering in the Flagship Lounge. So it makes perfect sense to me that Delta was able to avoid having specialized DeltaOne lounges for a while.

My layover was only about an hour, so I shortly had to make my way to gate B7 and the 737 that would take me to Oakland.

Boarding started on time and was efficient. Delta has a huge number of boarding groups, but they hide it a bit better by using a bunch of different names for the various zones. First class boards in Zone 1, which is the 4th group after all the pre-boarding groups.

I had selected seat 3C and really couldn’t tell much of difference between the 737 and A321 seat. I understand why most people don’t really know what type of plane they’re flying on. But that’s also good from a business perspective because, at least in theory, an airline wants to provide a consistent experience for its (non-expert) guests based on which cabin they purchase.

Unlike the flight from BWI, this flight was long enough to properly review, and so the overall experience will be based on the ATL-OAK experience because there was nothing about the BWI-ATL experience that was sufficiently memorable to improve (or downgrade) the longer flight’s review.

We had an efficient boarding, followed by an on-time departure from ATL with minimal ground traffic. Shortly after takeoff, the inflight service began.

Between when I booked this ticket and when I actually flew it, I (re)learned that Delta has a few routes that are referred to by their frequent fliers as “box routes”. On these routes, Delta only offers a boxed meal for first class. The general consensus is that this style of catering is for low priority airports where Delta has few flights long enough for a meal service that they don’t have sufficient competitive pressure to sign a proper catering contract with the city.

After a short Googling, I learned that ATL-OAK was likely to be one of these routes. I briefly considered changing my flight. However, I didn’t because I’d been able to secure a free upgrade with the certificate, and I knew I could eat in the lounge. And I thought showing off the Delta Box would be an interesting addition to the blog.

So behold, the Delta First Class Box Service:

I was given a choice between a vegetarian and a ham sandwich. I selected the ham sandwich. The experience reminded me a lot of the Mimi’s Café sandwich I’d gotten on my flight from DFW to RIC back in 2020.

In summary, these flights represented good value for the Regional Upgrade Certificate I used.  The ground experience in Atlanta was very good. I liked how efficient the layover was, and the SkyClub was a step up over competitor lounges (5/5). The seat on the 737 and A321 were basically the same and were on par with what I’ve come to expect for domestic first class seats in the US (3/5). The service on this flight was proactive and very friendly (5/5). The food was disappointing (2/5), but the IFE was very good (4/5). Overall, the flight gets a 20/25, which is slightly above average but definitely leaves room for improvement.

I paid about $400 for this ticket in economy class and then used a Regional Upgrade Certificate to move to First Class. I paid for the ticket using my Delta Reserve Card, and so for these two flights, I earned around 3 200 Delta miles from the flight and then an addition 1 200 from the credit card for a total return of around 12%.