Originally Posted by
N590UA
Long time lurker and first time poster. I'm a bit surprised of all the trash talking of the Delta 739ER. While I understand in terms of performance it's a P.O.S. in general, I think DL has done the best they can with them for the most part. They all have mood lighting, giant overhead bins, and AVOD and that's enough for me to deal with it. Have any of you been on United's 739ERs? They are pretty worn down compared to Delta's for the most part and if they don't have DirecTV installed (now free but still dated) there are no video screens installed at all.
Deplaning on them also takes forever, but as does the new high density configuration of Delta's 757 as well. One time I clocked boarding in coach from the gate area to my seat and it was close to 20 minutes on LAX-ATL on the new 757 configuration. The jetways just get slammed with people trying to board especially with the new giant overhead bins.
United's 737-900s were a dream but unfortunately they are slowly refreshing them to a much denser config. The original configurations were 147 seaters and had a very, very large economy plus section (51 seats). Unfortunately their updated version is 179 seats, but they still have significantly larger Economy Plus section (27 vs. 21 on Delta, and 4 of the 14 aisle/window seats in C+ are bad in the Delta config meaning there are only 10 "desirable" C+ seats).
Long story short, the Delta 739 is bad for two reasons. One is that the airflow is terrible. The gaspers don't gasp - they whisper. Every flight I take on a 739 is an uncomfortably hot one. Number two, there are few good seats. The only good economy seats on the plane are 10A, 10C, 19A, 19C, 19D, 19F, 21A, and 21F. 21C and 21D are okay, but not great. The 757 has more "good seats", as does United's configs.
This is all aggravated by the narrower seats on a 737 (vs. an A320), but it doesn't seem to be the driver of disdain since 757s have the same undersized seats as the 739 and most people here like the 757s.