Review of Delta Air Lines flight from Salt Lake City to Detroit in Economy

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to another trip report! Having been a good six months since my last international trip (due to finishing up my last semester of school) I was very much looking forward for this trip to one of my favorite cities in Europe. A few months before this trip I saw a very enticing SkyMiles award sale to go from SLC to Barcelona for only 42,000 miles roundtrip in main cabin! I couldn't pass up on the deal so I booked the flight. When choosing an itinerary there were two choices to choose from, one with two stops (DTW and JFK) and another with just one stopover in JFK. Of course my inner avgeek self went for the multi stop option as this will give me the chance to fly three aircraft types going to Europe. The first one (this trip report) would be on a Boeing 737-900ER followed by a CRJ-900LR between Detroit and New York with lastly on the Boeing 767-300ER taking me across the Atlantic from New York to Barcelona.
The day finally came for departure and my first flight of the day would be departing from SLC at 6:00am. When waking up this morning I started to regret very much choosing this flight as I'm not necessarily a morning person ? but oh well. This being Utah it was freezing when I arrived at the airport at around 4am and the airport looked deserted.

I headed over to the self check-in kiosk to print both my boarding pass and luggage tag. Right after that I headed off to the friendly Delta agent who verified my ID before taking my luggage. 

This was my first trip without all the covid related nonsense where I felt strange for the agent not asking me for any vaccine card and what not, it felt great! After dropping off my luggage at the desk and headed to the security check point. 

Security took no time and I was airside in just 10 minutes. I was quite surprised that there were very few people at the airport, despite there quite a good amount of flights on other carriers that depart around 6am. I guess I'm not the only one who dislikes early morning flights ?.

Our departure gate will be A25 which close by after coming out through security. 

Here's our aircraft that will take us to Detroit this morning.

Some information about my plane:
Flight number: DL948
Aircraft: Boeing B737-900ER
Registration: N853DN
Delivered: February 18, 2016 

Our flight will take a little over 3 hours at a distance of 1,481 mi or 2384 km.

boarding

Boarding began on time and I boarded with Main 1 group.

My seat for the next 3 hours (14F) in the first row of main cabin seats, right behind comfort+. 

Legroom was pretty good. These seats offer 31" of pitch (I'm 5'9" or 176c, for reference). 

Very happy that there's IFE system at each seat. Not at all a fan of bring your own device entertainment (cough cough AA)

Once settled in, the FA passed through the cabin offering complimentary headphones which weas a nice gesture.

Boarding was completed quite fast and I got lucky with having the middle seat empty. Today's flight load to Detroit looks at about 85% in Y and 100% in J.

Shortly after, a welcome video featuring Ed Bastian (Delta's CEO) was played followed by the general safety video. 

pushback/takeoff

We pushed back ahead of schedule. You can check out the whole pushback & takeoff video below: 

Lining up on the runway for takeoff.

It got a bit turbulent as we flew through the clouds above SLC. 

Unfortunately it stayed pretty turbulent through the first half of the flight. So the FA's couldn't commence their service. 

Gradually the sun started to rise.

This morning's sunrise was absolutely breathtaking. 

tray table/seatback contents

A look at the tray table and seatback contents. 

ife system

It's been about 1.5h since we took off and there's still no service, in the mean time let's checkout the IFE system. Delta's entertainment selection was fantastic and definitely plenty for a medium haul flight as this one.

My absolute favorite part was the interactive map ?. I always enjoy being able to see where exactly I'm flying over, anyone else?

inflight service

Over an 1.5 since we took off I began to smell the brewing of coffee in the cabin signaling the start of the inflight service. In main cabin DL offers a variety of soft drinks as well as coffee (also decaf) and tea accomponying with a Biscoff cookie since this was a morning flight . The cart came by my row and I asked for a coffee and water to help wake me up this morning and the FA gladly gave them to me (unlike AA FA's who sometimes seem to have an issue when we kindly ask for two drinks ?).  

This has to be a match made in heaven ?.

Flying over Milwaukee, MI

descent/landing

You can check out the entire descent and landing into Detroit in the video below:

Shortly after the service, the pilot announced that we were beginning our initial descent into Detroit. 

Lining up to land on the runway.

Welcome to Detroit! We arrived at the gate 30 minutes ahead of schedule.

deplaning

A brief look at the first class cabin as I was deplaning.

One last look at our Boeing 737-900ER through these unplanespotter friendly windows (if that's even a word for it ?). Thanks for the safe journey!

This concludes the trip report for this segment. Thanks for reading!