This long awaited trip to -yet again- the United States west coast, will take you in three parts:
* AMS-SFO KL605 on a Boeing 787-9 (found here)
* LAS-LAX DL1898 on a Boeing 737-800 (you are here)
* LAX-AMS KL602 on a Boeing 747-400 Full Passenger (found here)
A warning beforehand that all pictures were taken using my iPhone and some, if not most, are vertical. My apologies if this bothers you. Also, this trip was made with two persons and I tend to switch a lot between 'I' and 'we' - do note that we were with the two of us throughout the whole of the trip, but most are from my point of view.
A brief summary of our trip: we were in the Bay area for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A local whom I met online toured us through San Francisco on Saturday and on Sunday we went to explore the Bay area itself (stuff like Fremont, Silicon Valley, Palo Alto etc.). On Monday we drove to San Luis Obispo via Monterey and hwy 101 (we wanted to drive Hwy 1 but it was closed so we had to detour). On Tuesday we drove to Santa Monica and our hotel in Los Angeles County, we visited downtown LA, Hollywood and Griffith Park on Wednesday, before driving to Las Vegas on Thursday where we visited several properties on the Strip as well as Fremont street on Thursday evening and Friday, and on Saturday morning at 7 AM we were at the bus stop to catch the WAX to McCarran Airport.
We tried to check in the day before which succeeded but the app refused to give us mobile passes. A quick conversation with Delta via Twitter was the result and I was told that our tickets were KL-issued and not DL- so our ticket numbers were not right and we had to get them at the airport. Bummer, but nothing to do about it.
View from the bus stop - this was not our bus, we took the WAX
The bus ride did give us some nice views of the distant strip. We did cross the strip later on as well, but I did not take a picture.
Arriving at McCarran airport Terminal 1 we went upstairs to the 'checkin area' but we had no clue where to go. We knew that we'd depart from gate D42 so followed signs for D-gates but found ourselfs in the TSA security filter already so we exited and went to look for checkin which apparently was downstairs. We eventually found the Delta checkin with a long queue but we'd think we'd use the kiosks (oh silly us, we had of course bags to be checked so we needed to be in that queue anyway). Kiosk printed my flimsy boarding passes but refused to print my GF's BP's because apparently her name was different on their passport compared to our booking… ooooh Delta… mine is as well………. I always leave out my middle name but in my case that never goes wrong. Anyway, my GF was presented with a flimsy help tag and we then joined the queue that had become significantly smaller in the time we had been struggling with the machines. We explained to the agent that her docs needed to be verified and that was all okay after all. We told her that we should have joined the queue immediately because we needed our bags weighed and dropped off after all. My gf was presented two cardboard boarding passes to which I said jokingly 'hey, you get to have cardboard ones!' after which the agent printed me some cardboard ones too. I couldn't be happier (I really HATE the new flimsy boarding passes).
Kiosk giving an all-OK sign
On our way I wanted to make a obligatory FID shot - American style sorted by alphabet rather than chronologically.
New boarding pass - happy as a kid in a candy store. The agent however, stapled them together. I removed the staple and had my own cardboard
We then went back to the security checkpoint where I was treated to again the usual pat-down and my girlfriend to an explosives check. We were all clear, took the train to the D gates and had a Cinnabon in the concourse.
I already felt that LAS wasn't really interesting to spot and as we were tired we went to the gate lounge and took some seats next to our gate with view of the apron and our incoming 737. I thought I took a picture of the incoming 737, but apparently I didn't. Oh well. I did not note the registration initially, but our tail number was 3746. I guess it was N3746H, a 737 from 2001, which was flying out of BNA before flying us to LAX. Boarding was called and we waited for our zone to be called and rushed on board.
We took our seats 23E and F (which is when I realised that I had booked us row 23 on our flight to Amsterdam as well, more on that in the next report) over our seat mate, a fine gentlemen who made the necessary sounds but wasn't overly annoying and apologised when he accidently hit me with his elbow. The guy in front of my GF got pissed because my GF was controlling the IFE (which I had anticipated we'd have, but it was the older version, but one may not complain about that on a flight less than an hour).
Cabin view
This was the main activity besides being turned off.
Our chief purser announced himself just like the captain and welcomed us on board. Flight time from takeoff to landing was announced being 45 minutes. Safety video started playing when we pushed back bang on time and we then took off from LAS airport on time. Chief purser announced WiFi availability (which I find ridiculous for a 45 minute flight of which one spends only 25 minutes in WiFi-covered altitude) and announced that no service would be conducted on this flight due to the short duration. The crew would do their best to suit every request but mentioned again not everyone can receive service for which he apologised.
Takeoff video: click
As I was in the middle seat I mostly ceased photographing activity, except for this shot. Flight was réally uneventful.
After an uneventful cruise we started our descent around here.
We were treated to a nice view of LA on approach which I had already seen around 5-6 months earlier. This is why I treated my GF to the liberty of having the window seat for this short flight.
We landed a bit ahead of schedule on runway 25 and taxied to our gate where our apparently New York-based crew bid us farewell. I like that they mention where your crew is from.
Landing video: click
Disembarkation was swift for a change and we were in T5 soon enough and took the underground connector to T4 and onwards to TBIT, which is where I will cut off this report.
Please accept my apologies for the report being short. I had expected it to be longer - middle seat combined with no service. I did want to share it with you. Thank you for reading and please join me in my next report which will be coming up soon.
