Review of Delta Air Lines flight from Atlanta to Washington in Economy

DAL

DL - Delta Air Lines

Flight taken on 29 June 2025
DL2549
00:05 01h 22m 01:27
Class Economy
Seat 22A
edsong14
44 · 21 · 0 · 2

As an Avgeek, one of my favorite events of the year is the Airliners International convention, the biggest event of its kind in the world which has an enormous collectibles show, as well as lectures and seminars about the industry. I've made it kind of a tradition to go each year, and this year it was in Atlanta at the Delta Flight Museum. I have an aunt who lives in Atlanta, so I was able to get in a visit with her afterwards. For the first night of the trip, though, I stayed at the Kimpton Overland Hotel, which had a special rate for Airliners International attendees, and my room had great views of the final approach into ATL for planes landing on 26R.

The show itself was very fun as always, although the tours were done by lottery this year for the Delta training center and other ATL airport facilities, so I just skipped the tours altogether. I did hear a couple interesting lectures though, one by a college student about how Gen Z and millennials are shaping the industry, and another by Noel Philips about his round-the-world journey to earn 1 million SAS miles. I already am looking forward to next year's convention in Denver, and even before that Noel is putting on Avcon 2026 in Atlanta at the flight museum, a convention for creators like himself, Josh Cahill, Jeb Brooks and many more.




KE 748 from ICN, DL 330 from AMS, DL 359 from ICN, TK 789 from IST and KL 777 from AMS. A couple of these were taken from my room and others were from the front loop outside the hotel.



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Hard to beat buying airline collectibles under the Spirit of Delta 767-200


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SK MD-81 model I bought—I did have the chance to fly one of the other SK MD-80 variants when I was eight, from CPH-GOT but my only memory of it was sitting down and promptly falling asleep


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Noel Philips giving a talk about his round-the-world journey on SkyTeam to give him a million SAS miles


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Someone had made a model of one of the ATL concourses largely with Legos


At the Airport


My aunt was set to fly out to Paris that same night, so my cousin drove both of us to ATL and dropped us off at the international terminal, which I had never flown out of before. I was set to have a whole evening at ATL as my flight didn't depart until 9:30, but on the way there, however, I got a text from Delta that my flight had been delayed 40 minutes from 9:30 to 10:10. That wouldn't have been an issue except for the fact that the last Metro train from IAD towards the city left at 1:13 AM, and any further delays could jeopardize me catching that train. As we pulled up to the terminal, I contemplated getting on the standby list for an earlier flight. In hindsight, I probably should have just left that alone as it would have made the evening a lot less stressful.

Since I wasn't checking any bags, I said goodbye to my aunt and headed right through security, which while the line was short, there were several family units who didn't quite know what to do in the process. Once I got through at around 5:30, I went on the Delta app and checked the situation as to going on standby, and the first flight that was offered was at around 8:00, so I joined the list, but one of several pop-up storms that evening had popped up during the time I was in line at security, and that was kind of foreshadowing of the rest of the evening. I headed over to Concourse B, picked up some dinner and headed over to the gate to wait to see if I would be going home earlier.

It wasn't too long, however, before the standby flight also began picking up delays and the gate kept changing between B14 and B19. Most of the next hour was spent zipping between those two gates and refreshing my Delta app to see if I was going to get a seat on the earlier flight to IAD, but that was soon cancelled (and at the same time, a plane that I think was bound for MCI was towed back into the gate surrounded by fire engines), so there were two sets of passengers who were in limbo. They were all told to go to the customer service desk, and I can only imagine how their night was going to shape up. I headed over to the gate for my flight in Concourse D and just decided to camp out there, but just minutes later, I got a text that my flight was back on time and departing back from Concourse C. This time I walked instead of taking the Plane Train, got a shake at Five Guys and watched some soccer on my iPad at the gate, not knowing what was to come.


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Some pre-flight entertainment at the gate


The Flight


Boarding was on time and very straightforward, but that was just about the last thing about this night that I could say that about. I settled into 22A and continued the Bollywood film I had started on the way down, and even as most of the passengers had boarded, I noticed that our scheduled departure time was near and the captain had not given his usual briefing. I noticed that a couple ground ops people were caucusing with the captain up front, and at about 9:40, he finally came on and explained the situation: there was an equipment swap to get us on this plane, but the plane we were on was set to fly to SBA and thus had more fuel than we needed, so we needed to offload some fuel. He said it would take about 10-15 minutes, but at around 10:10, he came back on and said that they needed another 10 minutes to balance it between the tanks.

That 10 minutes quickly became another hour, and something I was worried about came back into play: although WMATA had recently extended their weekend hours, the last train from IAD to where I needed to go left at 1:13 AM. If we didn’t get off the gate by 11:15 at the latest, I would likely need to shell out a lot of money to get an Uber back home. Right before 11, the captain said “Not too much longer and we’ll be underway,” but it wasn’t for another 40 minutes before the de-fueling was complete. During this time, the crew largely was back in the galleys but they eventually came through with cups of water towards the end of the whole ordeal. We left the stand right after 11:50, and took off at 12:05.


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Don’t remember where the 738 next door was going


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This 717 was making the short hop across to CHS


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This CRJ900 had just arrived from SHV and was headed for BMI


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3 Idiots, one of the most iconic Bollywood films


The Flight


In the briefing, our captain had said that we would have to do some maneuvering to have a smoother ride, and he wasn’t lying—soon after takeoff, Knoxville came into view! Very far west of DC. Despite the lead FA saying that the crew would stay seated throughout the flight, they soon sprung into action to do a drink and snack service (even though about half of the passengers had fallen asleep back on the ground in ATL). I got my usual cranberry juice and Biscoff cookies and continued watching Cars for the rest of the flight.

For some reason on both of my flights, the moving map was not working, so when I looked back at FR24 afterwards I was taken aback when I saw the routing. We had taken off to the north, and after Knoxville taken a big turn east over southeastern Kentucky and West Virginia before making an approach that would be more like the one into DCA over the Shenandoah. There must have been some serious storms over the Carolinas if we were avoiding them entirely. It was quite bumpy for a good part of the ride, but obviously not too bumpy that the FAs couldn't do their service.


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Knoxville, Tennessee, good old Rocky Top


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Typical DL service, feat. Cars. At this point I just wanted something to watch where I didn’t have to use my brain.


Post-Flight


We pulled into gate B74, in the domestic part of Concourse B where all of the non-Star Alliance carriers are housed. The terminal was mostly empty, except for one plane worth of people on the international side who seemed to be delayed. The AirTrain was still running, however, and that quickly brought us to the main terminal. As it was well past 1:13, the Metro back towards DC had already left the station for the last time, so Uber it would be back to the East Falls Church station, where my parents had left our car for me. I had to wait quite a bit for one, and when I got one, the driver told me that he was about to head home for the night. I made sure to leave him a big tip. He got me to East Falls Church around 2:20 (it only set me back $30, which is half of what I expected to pay), and I pulled into my driveway at about 2:30, 9 hours after leaving my aunt's house in Atlanta.


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Terminal was mostly deserted at this time of the night


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The iconic Saarinen terminal by night

Display all

Product ratings

Airline

Delta Air Lines 8.1

  • Cabin9.0 / 10
  • Cabin crew7.5 / 10
  • Entertainment/wifi10.0 / 10
  • Meal/catering6.0 / 10
Departure airport

Atlanta - ATL7.9

  • Efficiency6.5 / 10
  • Access9.0 / 10
  • Services8.0 / 10
  • Cleanliness8.0 / 10
Arrival Airport

Washington - IAD9.1

  • Efficiency10.0 / 10
  • Access10.0 / 10
  • Services7.0 / 10
  • Cleanliness9.5 / 10

Conclusion

A fairly typical domestic flight with Delta once the plane took off, but the evening was far from straightforward as a whole. Part of it was my fault for booking one of the last flights out of the day (luckily I was not on the one that was cancelled), but I would have appreciated a lot more communication about the delay while we were sitting on the plane. All of that said, however, DL got me home safely and soundly, and I still will look to fly them whenever possible. Next up for me, I'll be flying out to Portland for a memorial, and my parents and I are taking UA from IAD-ORD-PDX there, and on the way back I'm going PDX-ORD, staying in Madison for a couple days, and then ORD-DCA, all on United.

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