Delta Air Lines

This is going to be an interesting trip. We bought our airplane tickets just two days ago. We drove home late Monday evening after camping in Canyonlands. Wednesday around noon Brett said he found cheap tickets to Quito this week and we had 2 hours to decide if we were going. We have talked about visiting Ecuador for years. Our only choice was to say yes. So we bought tickets Wednesday afternoon to fly out at the crack of dawn Friday morning. We drove to Salt Lake Thursday after work and started planning the trip that night. We figured out a good outline of what we wanted to do and see, booked the first few hotels and activities, and went to bed sometime after midnight. About 4 hours later we were driving to the airport. I think that’s a record turnaround for us. ...

We flew directly from Salt Lake City to Paris in just under 10 hours. It’s a fantastic flight and it was even better being in the comfortable seats in Delta’s Premium Select area. Brett has Diamond Medallion status with Delta and was able to get us all upgraded on the longest leg of the trip. Thanks to favorable tailwinds, we landed in Paris about 30 minutes earlier than expected, giving us about 12 hours to go out and enjoy the city before jumping on our next flight to Cairo. ...

Flying first class on Delta isn’t what it used to be. A lot of that is because of the coronavirus, but a lot of it is because of cost-saving due to the pandemic. Gone are the drinks to drink as the rest of the plane boards. Gone are the warm towels. The seats are still spacious and soft, but that’s about the only thing that’s the same. Not only were we never asked what we wanted to drink, but there were no drinks at all. Instead, they gave us a ziploc bag with goldfish crackers and a 4 ounce bottle of water. We were disappointed, but I think Charmaine was really upset. If I read her reaction correctly, I think she was somewhat upset that we had spent the money (miles) to fly first class only to have this extremely downgraded experience. Her entertainment system was broken, so she couldn’t watch anything. She fought with her entertainment system for an hour or more and seemed so frustrated that she almost seemed to be holding back tears. We had the flight attendants reboot the system and it eventually started working, but it was definitely not a great experience. ...

We took a taxi to the airport. It costs about $40 each way (after tip). Parking at the airport is $15 per day, so the $80 taxi ride is a money saver for any trip longer than 4 days. This trip is going to be a bit longer than that. When you hire a taxi to take you to the airport, you never know if they’ll pick you up or drop you off on time. Will they drive the same route you drive? Do they drive faster or slower than you? So you plan on a little extra time. We also allowed a little more extra time because we knew we would be checking a bag filled with our scuba stuff. We had scheduled the driver to pick us up at 9:30. He called at 9:20 to make sure he had the right address. He showed up right on time, drove the shortest route, and got us to the airport by 9:50. We walked straight to the self-check kiosk, checked in, turned in our bags, walked through security without stopping (there’s never a line in San Jose) and sat down at our gate. I guess we didn’t need as much buffer as we thought. We had nearly two hours until our flight was scheduled to leave. ...