Review of Delta Air Lines flight Sao Paulo → Detroit in Economy

Delta Airlines DL 52
GRU-DTW (São Paulo/Guarulhos->Detroit)
DEP GRU 22:15 09 JAN 2016
ARR DTW 06:00 10 JAN 2016
Aircraft: B767-300ER (Winglet)
Duration: 10:45


Flight route map courtesy of www.flightaware.com

Heading back home after a vacation is always hard. Trying to take some pictures for my blog posts on my return flights are harder. This flight report is my return flight from Brazil to US after my 2-week long and awesome trip. It will be a much shorter flight report than my DL 105 flight report; I simply took less pictures than I did on the DL 105 flight.

Sampa, you will be missed. Valeu!

My friends drove me from Bom Retiro to Guarulhos Airport that day. It was pouring hard by the afternoon.

Delta check-in counters. There were flights to New York and Detroit that night.

My boarding passes for tonight's and tomorrow's flights. I would be connecting through Detroit for my next flight to San Diego. There was supposed to be a snowstorm coming in soon after I arrive in Detroit. Concerned, I asked the check-in agent if I should be concerned. He said there are no cancellations as of then so it shouldn't be a problem. I really needed to make it back to San Diego as scheduled.

After saying last byes to my friends, I headed to the VIP Lounges upstairs in Terminal 2.

VIP Lounge entrance.

Some snacks and beverage choices were offered.

The lounge itself was very spacious, with clean bathrooms and nice view into Terminal 2 apron.

Walking over to my gate.

Terminal 2 international side.

My plane, B767-300ER Winglet.

DL Businessfirst class.

Economy class.

The inflight entertainment system. I haven't seen that kind of tray table before on a flight.

Passengers settling in. The Brazilian lady who was supposed to sit on 37F (aisle seat) preferred to sit on the window seat. I was okay with that as long as she doesn't have to use the restroom too many times. She ended up not having to go to restroom at all throughout the whole flight.

About 1.5 hours in, we got our dinner.

Chicken with rice and salad with bread rolls and cookies. The strawberry pudding cake was pretty good, not too sweet. There was a Brazilian lady next to me who gave me her cookies and the cake to me to eat.

I woke up when the plane was making the descent into Detroit.

For breakfast, a hot sandwich and snack boxes containing granola bar, chocolate, and fruits were distributed.

The hot sandwich had cheese and ham within.

The entertainment system had some problem, so the last 40 minutes or so, nobody could use it.

Checking flight status after clearing the immigrations. They only had about four immigrations officers working at that time (2 for US Citizens and 2 for visitors). I passed through the immigrations in 10 minutes, but I could see that there was a huge line for the Brazilians.

There was a Delta Skyclub entrance right before entering the McNamara concourse. Neat thing about the Detroit McNamara concourse is that the Westin hotel offers its own security checkpoint directly from the hotel lobby. The terminal itself is very modern and clean. To this date, it's one of the best terminal I've ever been in.

Waiting for my next flight to San Diego.

It started snowing hard by the time the plane was making its way to the runway. The plane needed to make a stop to de-ice, during which time all of the runways were shut down due to too much snow and wind. After 2 hours of waiting on the de-ice tarmac, the plane eventually went back to the original gate, where we waited for about 3 hours. Had the plane departed about 30 minutes earlier, we would've made it out before the snowstorm.

We eventually took-off about 5 hours behind schedule. I was thankful that I still made it to San Diego that day.