Flight Review: Delta JFK-LAX in BusinessElite

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Last week I found myself flying from New York (JFK)- Los Angeles again for the holidays. This time, I was on the 6:15pm departure. I had flown this route about a month ago, which I wrote about here, so this time I had something to compare it to.

I was pleased to see that the Sky Deck at the Delta Sky Club at Terminal 4 was open, since last time it was closed due to the snow. After spending some time I headed to the gate, which was a madhouse. The flight was initially oversold and they were offering $600 in Delta vouchers to go out the next morning, but it appears that there were some no-shows, so I don’t think they ended up needing any volunteers.

Screen Shot 2013-12-30 at 2.20.14 PM

Headed to Los Angeles, I was on a 767-300ER which had 26 seats in BusinessElite. There were only 4 gate upgrades according to the gate information display screens, but as a Platinum Medallion, I was lucky enough to score one.

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Settling into 6C, I was welcomed with some champagne, as they serve champagne or orange juice as pre-departure beverages on this route. Once everyone was boarded, we were ready for pushback and to begin our 5 hour and 40 minute flight to Los Angeles.

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The crew on this flight was a NYC based crew, and they weren’t all that attentive. They did not address any passengers by name during meal service and most of the time they were in the galley. We also had 2 nonreving flight attendants who sat in pull out jumpseats in the aisle in between BusinessElite and Economy Comfort, which I’ve never seen before.

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Menus were distributed, and I selected the Chicken Saltimbocca for my main entree. The other entree choices were lamb chops or penne pasta.

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I decided to switch things up and order a Corona once we were air borne.

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The appetizer tray included fennel, kalamata olives, salami, goat cheese, white bean spread, a sicilian and a harvest salad all which were very tasty.

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For the main entree, I had the Chicken Saltimbocca, which was actually very tasty. The chicken was very moist and had a mushroom marsala sauce with a side of asparagus.

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For dessert, there was a choice of assorted cheese and fruit or salted caramel gelato. I opted for the gelato and it was great.

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About an hour before arrival, we were served warm chocolate chip cookies, which I forgot to take a picture of, but they were quite tasty!

Bottom Line

The 767-300ER is growing on me especially since these seats fully reclined to 180 degrees and feature larger individual video displays. In BusinessElite, they featured the new Westin Heavenly bedding, pillow and Tumi amenity kit.

This is the second time I’ve had an inattentive crew on this route and both times they have been NYC based. I’m not trying to jump to any conclusions here, but you’d expect with this route being so competitive, Delta would really try to stand out with their service, but that has not been my case either time.

As a reminder, Delta is only offering complimentary upgrades on their transcontinental routes through March 1st, at which point complimentary Medallion upgrades will non longer be offered on JFK-LAX/SFO/SEA. So if you’re hoping for an upgrade on this route, be sure to fly this route before the change!

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