Review of Delta Air Lines flight Salt Lake City → New York in Domestic First

A visual of my entire itinerary from Salt Lake City, Utah to Athens, Greece via JFK which would cover a total distance of 6,930mi/11,153km. 

This trip report will cover the 4h journey between SLC to JFK.

introduction

Welcome to another trip report!
This is the start of my trip to Greece which I took in the winter of 2023. At the time Delta was having the 'end of year' sale on reward fares which caught my attention and decided to splurge my hard earned points on a fun and exciting trip. One of this European cities that were on sale was Athens, Greece. I went to Athens earlier in 2023 and I fell in love with the city so much that I decided to visit again but this time with my mom. The itinerary for this trip will of course be on Delta and is pretty straight forward getting there; SLC-JFK-ATH. The catch to this  great redemption was a 12h layover at JFK. Though this wouldn't be a problem at all as me and my mom have CC's that grants us access to the Delta SkyClub once we got there. Let's get started ;). 

My first flight of the trip would be a red-eye flight which I'm not a huge fan of in general. However, the night before I got a delightful surprise that I have been upgraded to First class thanks to my medallion status with DL. This will be my first ever red-eye flight flying in a domestic first class cabin so it will be interesting to see what will be offered on this flight (spoiler alert not much at all 😂).

I left the night before thanksgiving (a US holiday) and the airport was not surprisingly deserted. 

check-in

Let's go ahead and get checked in!

I printed out my paper boarding pass and checked one luggage which all in all took no more then 5 minutes.

Now off to security control.

Security went by smoothly and took no more then 15 minutes.

delta Sky Club

Since I had an hour before boarding I headed to the Sky Club here in SLC located just after clearing security.

Upon checking in by self kiosk machines, I headed up stairs where all the action was. This was actually my very first time visiting a Sky Club as I had just gotten a CC that comes with this benefit. I have to say I was quite impressed by how modern yet elegant the atmosphere was. 

Though club was fairly full and because of that I wasn't able to get a lot of pictures for privacy of others. But the club in general was clean, had a lot of seating options and had a descent array of hot and cold items. For my small dinner tonight I got a tuna slider, cheese w/ dried fruit and some naan bread with hummus.   

To drink I went for with a Ginger ale and to go I got a latte. 

On my way out of the club I decided to check out the departure board; my flight is DL399 with a scheduled departure time of 11:52p.

My departure gate for tonight's flight is A45 which is located at the far right end of the concourse A.

Here's my aircraft that'll take me across the country to New York this evening. 

Some information about my plane:
Flight number: DL 399 
Aircraft: Boeing 737-932(ER)
Registration: N841DN
Delivered: June 18, 2015
Age: 9.5 years (at time of flight)

This aircraft is configured in three cabin classes which are 20 domestic first class, 36 comfort + and 124 main cabin seats for a total capacity of 180 seats. For this flight I was luckily assigned the last window seat at 1D. (Seat map courtesy of aerolopa)

boarding

Boarding began promptly and I boarded with first class group.

We were greeted by a kind flight attendant at the door and I made my way to my seat 1D. Unfortunately there was someone already at 1C when I boarded so couldn't get a good view of my seat. Placed already at each seat in first class was a pillow and sealed blanket.  

Slight dislike about this seat or seats in the bulkhead in general are that the PTVs were quite a distance away from the seat to fully enjoy. 

Legroom though is excellent, these first class seats offer 20.9" of width and 37" of pitch. However these seats offer a little more legroom than the rest of the other rows due to the bulkhead in front.  I'm 5'9" or 176cm for reference.

The pillow and blanket provided are very nice and will come to very good use on this red eye flight 😉. 

Located at the shared armrest was a small bottle of water for each person.

The overhead panel includes the reading light, individual air vent and an FA call button.

During boarding the FA came throughout the FC cabin offering pre departure beverages. I went for an orange juice. 

Shortly after another FA came through the cabin offering headphones for use with the IFE.

My view out my window for this flight. Unfortunately due to this being a red eye flight there won't be much to see outside. I'm so forward of the plane that I could barely see the wing and the engines.

Next to us is an Airbus A220-300 that will be departing to nearby Newark, New Jersey. For our whole journey across the country we'll be following close behind this aircraft on our way to JFK. 

pushback

Boarding was complete and we pushed back 5 minutes ahead of schedule. Tonight's load for New York City is completely full at 100%.

Safety video began playing. 

takeoff

For tonight we'll be departing out of runway 34L.

See you in 2 weeks Utah!

Leaving Salt Lake City behind.

infight service

Inflight service on this flight tonight was very basic as one would expect. Due to this being a red eye flight there was no meal service therefore there was only a premium snack basket that was passed around the cabin and a choice of a drink about 50 minutes into flight. The FA did do a good job going around a few times throughout the flight asking if anyone needed anything which was great to see. For the drink I went for a bloody marry.    

After the service I went to sleep for about 3 hours or so and woke up as we were flying near over Detroit. 

initial decent

Before I knew it we were beginning our initial descent over northern New Jersey.

Got some spectacular views over the NYC area. 

Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR).

landing

This morning we'd be landing on runway 31L.

Welcome to NYC!

arrival at gate

We arrived at the gate 40 minutes ahead of schedule. 

This concludes the trip report, stay tuned for part 2 coming soon. Thanks for reading!