Introduction:
Hi, welcome to my trip report. You're probably wondering why the routing is Nashville-Nashville, and I'll get to that part later, just bear with me. This flight was supposed to be the first leg of my return Nashville-Seattle flight, and it was heading to Atlanta, where I was connecting onto another 757-200 that afternoon with a layover just over 2 hours. You can read the review for my inbound Seattle-Nashville flight here:https://flight-report.com/en/report/36892/delta-air-lines-dl2874-seattle-sea-nashville-bna But anyways, let's get to the flight portion of this report.
Nashville Airport:
I woke up at 6 am for my 9:45 am flight, and after having breakfast and packing, I arrived at the airport at about 7:55. It isn't that far from downtown, which I appreciated.
The airport wasn't crowded at this hour, so I was able to get my bags dropped and head to security without much of a wait.
The line at security wasn't horrible either, and I was airside by 8:15, then I took my grandparents (who I was traveling with) to the gate.
Here's the podium for our flight.
Since I still had almost an hour till boarding, I did some plane spotting, shown in the bonus section below.
Delta MD-88, also heading to Atlanta later that morning.
Delta 717-200, going to Detroit.
United Express E-145XR going to Newark. Personally, I think that route could sustain something bigger than a regional jet, but that's just my two cents.
A smoky engine startup for this United jungle jet, bound for Washington-Dulles.
Another United jet, this time an A319 going to San Francisco.
American Eagle CRJ-700 going to Chicago O'Hare.
Another American Eagle plane, an E-175 going to Philadelphia.
American Eagle E-140 (last regional jet, I promise!) flying to LaGuardia.
JetBlue A320 arriving from Boston, where it would also head back to an hour later.
Sun Country 737-800 arriving from a positioning flight from Las Crusces, NM. It would fly to Orlando later that morning.
The terminals at Nashville are rather bland, but they had adequate seating, were all connected airside, and there was decent amenities. My only complaint is that the walkway to Concourse A is rather narrow and dark, but I hear they're renovating the airport so hopefully that'll be fixed.
Before walking back to my gate in Concourse B, I got a photo of the plane taking me to Atlanta that morning. It was N684DA, a 25.7 year old 757-200 without winglets, that has spent its entire life with Delta, except for a short stint from 2003 to 2006 with Song, their former leisure subsidiary.
It was a crowded gate area since it was going to be a completely full flight. At 9:05 am, they started boarding, and a few minutes later my grandparents and I boarded in zone 1.
A closer view of the flying pencil.
Once I stepped onboard, I was very impressed. This was one of the 757s that Delta had done a cabin refresh on from nose to tail, and it showed. There were new, large overhead bins, new sidewalls and seats, and modern IFE. Essentially it was like an aftermarket Boeing Sky Interior, if that makes any sense.
I was seated in row 31, over the wing.
Legroom was adequate, and the seat was comfortable and had good recline.
The IFE screen was modern, high-resolution, and had excellent touch sensitivity. The content was the same as my inbound flight, so there was TV shows, movies, live TV, music, a flight map, and info about Delta.
There was also airport maps, which I appreciated since it would have been my first time connecting through Atlanta.
While boarding progressed, I turned the IFE to the flight data page, which I found pretty cool as an avgeek.
A Contour Airlines E-135 pulled up next to us, arriving from Tupelo, MS.
By 9:35 our aircraft was fully boarded and ready for departure. But then…
"An issue with the emergency brake":
The pilot came on the PA and said there was an issue with our emergency brake. They were calling maintenance, and didn't know how long it would be. While unsettling, I figured that I had a 2.5 hour connection, so I should be fine. A customer service agent boarded the plane and was personally talking to passengers who had tight connections about rebooking, which was a nice touch. Our scheduled departure time came and went, initially being pushed back to 10 am. I was thinking to myself about how I had told a friend a few days before this that I was flying Delta, and they quipped in response that it stands for Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport, and that maybe that acronym had some truth to it. Meanwhile, the crew provided timely announcements, saying they didn't know an ETD, but that they'd be happy to assist with rebooking passengers and checking on connections. I'd estimate that about 30 or 40 passengers left the plane, and I stayed put. Finally, at 10:30 a mechanic entered the plane and came on the PA, saying that the issue was more serious than they had thought, and that the new ETD was 1:00 pm. He then proceeded to explain how to rebook, but warned us that it was a busy travel day and was close to Thanksgiving, so lots of flights were full. Even if the plane had left at 1 (which it didn't), I would have missed my connection by half an hour, so I had to rebook my flights.
All the passengers deplaned after that, either going in line to rebook or waiting for the delayed flight.
When I got into the terminal, a giant line formed at the counter for the gate, but I remembered that I had the Delta app, so I chose to rebook from there. Since it was a Sunday and I had school the next day, I was primarily searching for flights that got into Seattle as early as possible. At first, I was looking at a double connection over Atlanta and Indianapolis, getting into Seattle at 7:30, but when I tried to select it, it was already fully booked. I then settled on an itinerary connecting via Minneapolis.
Here was my new flight schedule:
Delta Connection (Skywest) flt. 3719 depart Nashville 4:39 pm arrive Minneapolis 6:54 pm
Delta flt. 489 depart Minneapolis 7:50 pm arrive Seattle 9:47 pm
Although it could have been under better circumstances, I was excited for these flights since they were on an Embraer 175 and Boeing 757-300, and I hadn't flown on either of those aircraft types before. I went over to another much less crowded gate desk to print off my new boarding passes, and started thinking about how I was going to spend 6 hours in the Nashville airport.
Sorry to hear about the cancellation! Delta is probably the best of the legacy US3 carriers in dealing with IRROPS, which helps to soften the blow when things go wrong. The refreshed 757s look great, definitely better than AA's refreshed 757s which don't have any IFE.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! I agree about Delta IRROPS since I got compensation for everything, which I'll elaborate more on in a future report. Also, I concur about Delta's 757 cabin refresh-it definitely doesn't look like a 25 year-old plane on the inside!
Thanks for sharing this report. Sorry to hear about your long day of travel - but Delta always does a good job in situations like this I feel like. Glad you were able to make it back in the same day!
You're welcome-I'm glad you liked it. Nice username, and rather appropriate for this trip report. I agree about Delta's customer service in these situations, it just feels like their staff typically cares a little bit more about their customers than at the other airlines in my experience.
Less than a hour in Minneapolis? That's very tight. Hope you made that connection.
Thankfully I did make my connection, even though I arrived in the B gates, departed out of the F gates, and was traveling with two seniors. I was cutting it close though, since for my MSP-SEA flight I arrived right at the end of my boarding zone. I wouldn't have booked a connection that tight if I had a choice, but it was the best option I had at the time.