Hello and welcome to another series of flight reports! This series will cover another trip I took to Minneapolis over labor day weekend, this time with Delta.
Washington, DC to Minneapolis, MN (DCA - MSP) | Delta | A320 [THIS REPORT]
Minneapolis, MN to Detroit, MI (MSP - DTW) | Delta | 757-200 [REPORT HERE]
Detroit, MI to Washington, DC (DTW - DCA) | Delta | A319 [REPORT HERE]
Delta's New Boarding
I arrived at National Airport by way of the Metro Blue line just under two hours prior to scheduled departure time. I was quickly through security for the Delta / United concourse of Terminal B. The concourse was completely full of people on this holiday weekend – I managed to get a seat near gate 22 after everyone seated there joined the boarding line for an Atlanta flight.
About 15 minutes before boarding was supposed to begin, I headed over to gate 17 to join the boarding area. At DCA, Delta has implemented their new boarding procedure for all of their flights. Even though I had experienced it once before earlier in the year, that flight was just a CRJ-700 to Cincinatti (report here). This time it would be a 100% full A320.
Nearing the gate area, there was already a large group of people standing behind the zone posts, even before the inbound flight from MSP had finished deplaning. Since I was in zone 2, I squeezed my way through to the center of the crowd. I then waited for nearly 20 minutes in the middle of the large crowd for boarding to begin, which it did about 25 minutes prior to scheduled departure.
The lack of defined barriers between the zones surprised me. When zone 1 was called, nearly half of the people I thought were in line for zone 2 or 3 moved to the right and boarded with zone 1. I then was about third in line for zone 2. It was really quite obvious that many people were confused on where to stand, and there wasn't really enough room in the gate area for this process to take place. Also not helping was the signage – the columns separating the zones were relatively small, with even smaller arrows designating which side was which zone. In addition, the columns were at a slight angle to the gate desk, adding another confusion – should the queues form inline with the columns? Perpendicular to the rest of the concourse? Either way, I was quite relieved once zone 2 was called and I could get out of that mess.
Taxi
Seated in 30F for this flight. This A320 was equipped with the Delta's new Airbus cabin, including blue mood lighting and the spaceship-like PSUs above each row. However, it did not have seat-back entertainment systems. Even though Delta previously had decided to only equip it's A319 Airbuses with seat-back screens, the A320s have now begun to receive them as well. So even though this aircraft had the most recent cabin enhancements, including larger overhead bins, it will be getting another refurbishment some time in the future.
Looking in towards DCAs Great Hall – in a few years, this entire hall will become part of the secured area.
Our route this afternoon.
We pushed back a few minutes after scheduled departure. Heading out of the aisle past one of Delta's relatively new A321s.
Heading to runway 01 for departure.
Departure
Surprisingly, there was no wait at all for takeoff this afternoon. I had a great view of downtown DC after departure.
In Flight
After my previous experience with personal-device streaming entertainment on United (report on that fiasco here), I checked in with Go-Go via Twitter a few days before my flight to see if their system supported the latest versions of Android. Go-Go was confident I wouldn't have any issues.
Unfortunately for me, I had updated my phone to Android 8.0 Oreo just before this flight, and the streaming entertainment did not work at all. The selection process worked fine, transitioning to the Go-Go app after selecting something worked fine, but the content never loaded and the app would crash. I tried a few times with different content selections and the behavior was the same each time.
However, I had learned my lesson on that United flight, and had downloaded some Netflix to watch as a backup.
The in-flight service on this flight had the typical Delta selection of beverages, but had a higher-than-usual quality snack. Instead of the usual Biscoff cookies, the snack distributed on this flight was Kind granola bars.
Passing over Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan.
Approach and Landing
Starting our descent over western Wisconsin.
A thin cloud layer over the Minneapolis area.
Final approach for runway 12L.
Our arrival gate was over on the G concourse, so that meant a relatively lengthy taxi around Terminal 1.
Terminal 2 off in the distance.
On stand at gate G11.
Tip for anyone flying into MSP: If you're getting picked up by someone, have them go the departures level. The lower arrivals level is a complete mess of cars most of the time, while the departures level is generally less busy.
