Delta and Southwest Underwhelm on a Quick Bay Area Trip (Trip Report)

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 2267June 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 short. 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 2362June 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.

Delta and Southwest Underwhelm on a Quick Bay Area Trip (Trip Report)

Delta and Southwest Underwhelm on a Quick Bay Area Trip (Trip Report)

Delta and Southwest Underwhelm on a Quick Bay Area Trip (Trip Report)

Delta and Southwest Underwhelm on a Quick Bay Area Trip (Trip Report)

Delta and Southwest Underwhelm on a Quick Bay Area Trip (Trip Report)