FriendlySkies

Justin Meyer, deputy director of aviation for KCAD, shared a photo on IG today of the entrance signage for the SC. It currently lists the hours of operation as 0445-1830 Monday-Friday. One woild
hope it will also be open on the weekend…

captaink

Thankfully it’s a digital signboard, and the opening hours aren’t etched in carrera marble…

Hopefully they’re just testing the screen, or intend to expand to 7 days a week after a break-in period, or it may well be that they’re TDYing experienced SkyClub agents from another city to help support and train local staff and want to give them some time off. I can’t imagine they intend to only open on weekdays, but it does make me glad my first flight out of MCI on DL is on a Tuesday!

Trexel94

First interior shots

FriendlySkies

KMBC has some video from the new "Sky Lounge"

https://www.kmbc.com/article/delta-s...minal/43052472

Beckles

The Points Guy Article with a ton of pictures.

4:15 AM to 6:30 PM daily, I think there is one MSP flight close to 8:00 PM that it isn't good for. It's nice that it's early enough to get a bite before even the earliest flight.

ND76

Points Guy article contains an error: this is not the first ever airline club at MCI. Delta once had a Crown Room which was accessed by an elevator near, I think, Gate 57, which it closed, and the space was turned into a bar/restaurant which was named for the Kansas City Royals. I also wonder whether Eastern, which actually had a hub at MCI for a few years, had an Ionosphere Club somewhere in the airport.

I wonder whether this character Claude Roussel worked at Amtrak before coming to Delta? His comment about the SkyClub not being "a Wework" should have earned him the sack (as they say in the UK). Amtrak is another transportation company whose employees have contempt for Business passengers who need to get some work done.

Another point about the article: it is not surprising that the new MCI club will be nicer than anything at ATL, because each new club benefits from new constructions and new innovations which happen all the time. For that matter, the new clubs in LGA, LAX, ORD, SLC and AUS are nicer than ATL B or F, the two newest clubs there.

xliioper

According to this post, there were both former Eastern Ionosphere and TWA Ambassador's Clubs at MCI -- https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=468201

ND76

TWA used to have a large maintenance hangar at MCI. TWA is an airline I wish now that I had flown more, as their inflight service and hospitality in the 1980s and 1990s was quite similar to Delta's. It died a cruel death after Carl Icahn ended up owning about 40 percent of the seats on their flights (he sold them through outfits like Priceline), and the employee-owned TWA simply ran out of money. AA picked over TWA's bones, tried to make a go of TWA's STL hub amd couldn't, and then sold I think 12 ETOPS 757s to Delta, most of which I think are still around. One of the saddest sights I can remember in 40 years of business travel was at PHL in 2001, after 9/11, where there was a pile of TWA ground equipment, including baggage wagons, near the gates that DL used, abandoned when TWA folded.

I notice from your linked post that the original Frontier Airlines had a club at MCI. My late father, a recognized milliion miler on UA, used to fly Frontier and one of its acquired lines, Central, via Kansas City (probably MKC) in the 1960s and 1970s to Fort Smith, Arkansas, as his employer had a significant packing plant there (Nestle produces Gerber baby food there today).

FriendlySkies

AA also had an Admirals Club at MCI which closed in the summer of 2012.

Beckles

It's a fair point the new ones seem to be better than the old, but I think one advantage the MCI has over many SkyClubs is not just that it will be the newest (until it isn't), but it seems to be unusually large for the amount of traffic it will be handling. The Points Guy article worries it will be running at capacity during Delta's 'busiest departure banks', but at worst that will be an issue for an hour or so in the morning before 6:30 AM, below were today's flight departures:

5:20 AM to ATL 737-900
5:30 AM to SLC A319
6:00 AM to DTW 717
6:15 AM to LGA A220
6:19 AM to MSP 717
7:05 AM to ATL 737-900
7:09 AM to LAX 737-800
7:50 AM to BOS A220
8:00 AM to SEA A220
9:30 AM to JFK CRJ900
10:33 AM to ATL 737-900
10:45 AM to LGA CRJ900
10:51 AM to MSP 717
11:04 AM to DTW 717
12:27 PM to ATL 737-800
2:20 PM to SLC A319
2:25 PM to DTW A320
2:50 PM to LGA A220
3:22 PM to MSP 717
4:41 PM to ATL 737-800
5:39 PM to LGA EMB175
5:53 PM to DTW 717
6:29 PM to SLC A319
7:10 PM to ATL 737-900
7:55 PM to MSP EMB175

(Didn't know we had four A220 flights now)

ND76

How many gates will Delta have in the new terminal? How many gates will there be in the entire terminal?

Beckles

This is from May 2022, so it's possible it has changed, but in general that is where the Delta gates are, they have six right now and there is a non-leased gate at the very north end of the B concourse they can probably use if needed. In the current terminal they use four gates most of the day (57, 58, 59, and 60), then on weekday mornings they use the 50 and 52, so six gates matches what they have now, but they really only need that many in the morning right now, between 5:30 and 7:09 they have six flights departing, they could probably get away with less, but it would be a little more tight pulling planes up to gates from parking.

There are 40 gates in the new terminal, including five that can accommodate international arrivals (compared to one now).

captaink

I'm sure someone at Delta HQ has run the numbers on how many of their regular customers arriving or departing MCI over the last 6/12/24 months would have access, and probably found out that it's already a pretty big number (even without a "home" club for so many years I'm sure lots of DL flyers in MCI hold some sort of SC access instrument to get them into clubs at hubs and their destinations). Maybe not big enough to justify all 11,000 sq ft, but likely more than would comfortably fit in a 5,500 sq ft space (remembering that BOH prep areas are included in that total). I am a bit concerned about the 4:45-18:30 opening hours as DL gradually pushes flight departures later (the late SLC departure moves later by 1:30 in March) but hopefully that's just a test message or initial hours for the first week or so.

My hunch is that DL wants to have more, larger clubs at outstations so there's less likelihood of a traveler encountering crowded clubs at every airport in their trip. From a customer satisfaction standpoint, it's very different when, on a hypothetical MCI-ATL-FLL roundtrip, a flyer is able to enter the club at MCI and FLL without any wait or crowding, but has to skip the club in ATL due to lines and a short layover, vs going O-fer because there's no club at MCI and the FLL club is too small.

HuskerFlyer1

I'm thinking about buying a refundable ticket this week to check it out. Would there be any problem with entering the club then cancelling my ticket? Not every day you have a chance to check out something new like this and I don't have travel planned for a couple months.

FriendlySkies

I certainly wouldn’t make a habit of it if you do decide to go that route. There is always the ethical argument about doing so as well.