The SO and I decided to try the new SLE service on Delta Connection (Skywest).

Skywest serves SLE (Salem, OR) 2x daily to SLC. Flights started in June and it is the only commercial airline service at SLE.

SLE is a typical small market airport. Easy access, free parking, eager to please staff.

Friday, November 9
SLE-SLC departed and arrived on time on a CRJ-200. Unremarkable flight with typical Skywest beverage/snack service. I tapped the guy on the shoulder who was sitting in front of us to ask him to turn down his headphones. I just wasn't in the mood for Aerosmith at 6:25 in the morning.

Two non-rev crew members on board. I learned later that the SLE-SLC flight is popular with crew members commuting from NW Oregon to their SLC base. The PDX-SLC flights are harder to get onto, so SLE has become a handy alternative. Don't know what this says about the future of SLE flights, though. Plane was full otherwise.

SLC-PHL departed and arrived on time on a 737-800. This is Delta's appropriately named flight 1776. This was the third time I've been on this flight this year, and all three times the flight was on time, and the crew members have always been friendly and helpful. The flight was nearly full.

Monday, November 12
Arrived at PHL and got the dreaded "Kiosk check-in is not available, please use telephone headset to contact Delta Direct". Rang up an agent and found that the flight was running 50 minutes late due to a mechanical problem. Thus, we would most likely miss our connection to our SLE flight in SLC. Agent said she would see what she could do for us. I could have saved her a lot of time by telling her there was nothing she could do, since no other airline serves SLE, and no other airline flies PHL-SLC.

After waiting on hold for about 10 minutes (she came on periodically to remind me she was still there), the agent came back and confirmed that there was little chance of making it back to SLE that night. She said there wasn't enough time to get me to SLC by routing me through another city. And as for getting to SLE, she said "I had to Google the Salem airport because I never heard of it." Apparently the vast wealth of information available through the internet told her what I already knew: That no other airline serves SLE.

She told me she could confirm us on the next morning's flight to SLC, with a connection to SLE. Or, we could get on the delayed SLC flight and hope it makes up time in the air. (We would only need it to make up 15 minutes or so.) I confirmed that if we missed the connection, Delta would set us up with a hotel room. Given that, I decided to chance the connection since we really didn't have a reason to stay in Philly another night.

At the gate, I asked the agent if we could move closer to the front of the cabin so we would have a better shot at getting off the plane in time to make the connection. I was expecting that we would have to split up to do this, but she quickly gave us bulkhead seats together. It turned out enough people had been re-routed that in the end only 78 people were onboard.

Once airborne, the flight (DL 1409) was mostly routine. One of the crew members recognized us from the Friday flight to PHL. The second beverage service was downgraded to a quick dash through the cabin with water bottles due to a medium chop. Another crew member rushed through, practially tossing bags of peanuts in our laps. I appreciated the FA's efforts, as some flight crews would surely have ditched it entirely.

As it turned out, we had made up about 10 minutes in the air, but I didn't think it would be enough to make the connection. We arrived at gate D7 in SLC and were one of the first people off the plane, at 9:02. We did the old "dash down the concourse" routine and at 9:05 we presented ourselves at gate E77 for the 9:05 departure to SLE. The digital message sign indicated the flight was closed, and the agent confirmed that was indeed the case. I know that flights "close" 10 minutes before departure, but I thought perhaps they would hold it for 2 connecting passengers on the final flight of the night. Later, I checked the Delta website, which indicated the 9:05 departure had pushed back at 8:56. Weird.

Despite the misconnection, I give credit to Delta for quickly and efficiently lining us up with hotel and meal vouchers. In fact, it seemed too efficient. The voucher information was already in the system when we arrived at gate E77. My guess is that they did not hold the flight since the computer indicated that we would assuredly miss the flight. At any rate, less than 45 minutes after arriving at gate E77, we were ensconced at the SLC Airport Comfort Suites. It was a decent hotel room, with friendly and helpful front desk staff.

Tuesday, November 13
Our flight to SLE was not until 11:20, but we decided to skip the free breakfast at the hotel (although it actually looked pretty decent when I ducked in to grab some OJ) and head to the airport awhile. We had $28 worth of vouchers burning a hole in our pocket, after all. The free shuttle left as advertised and we quickly checked in and cleared security.

I've never spent much time at SLC aside from the typical 45-75 minutes between flights, so I had never really scoped out restaurants. We found Dick Clark's Bandstand Grill or something like that, but it was crowded, so we headed towards the lesser used concourses. Somewhere near the B concourse we saw signs for "The Terrace" restaurant, which was on level 3. It gave us a reasonable view of the mostly empty ramp between Terminals B and C.

The Terrace looked as though it would be a nice place to have dinner, but its breakfast menu was kind of weak. My omlette was okay, but SO's breakfast panini was underwhelming. With coffee and fruit juice, the total was around $20, so we used 3 $7 vouchers.

We still had a $7 voucher remaining, so we bought three bottles of Tazo iced tea at Starbucks to take home with us, for a total of $6.44. Wasn't going to let those vouchers go to waste.

SLE-SLC departed and arrived on time. Flight attendant was fresh-faced but efficient. The CRJ-200 was about 2/3 full. After the flight arrived, it took us literally 75 seconds from the moment we stepped off the plane to the moment we reached our car. Not bad.

The upshot is that flying from SLE was a good experience. The problem is that flying out of PDX is also typically a good experience. When the big city airport down the road is as good as PDX, smaller airports like SLE will have a harder time drawing customers. Of course, if you're heading to the east coast, you generally have to connect somewhere even if you are departing from PDX, so SLE doesn't suffer in that regards. The problem is that in the case of irrops, if takes longer to actually get you to SLE, since there are only 2 flights a day.