slappy

Easy connections at DFW. Man, I miss those.

Rick Astley

Weather delay is a function of traffic as well. Bad weather lowers the maximum traffic the airport can handle, and if that's less than the number of scheduled flights, they get backed up, much like a crowded freeway that stays backed up long after a fender-bender occurred.

zsmith2

Interesting that you are posting the same question on the OAL boards as well.

vikingscout

vikingscout

I hear that, My city use to have mainline to ATL,DFW,CVG,BOS,JFK,LGA

Now ATL(mainline), CVG(1 mainline, rest CRJ's), no DFW and the rest are CRJ only.

VS

IsleOfMan

What is it I'm missing about the L-1011 F seats... they look like big domestic F seat with about the same amount of recline. I'll take a BE seat any day. If it's the service that is the main differentiation (it seems it may be) then I can understand... but if it's the seats you're raving about, I wonder if it's a romanticized memory more than a superior product.

TMOliver

The 90s? With the 80s, eras of depravity and degeneration, when the old standards were abandoned for greedy corporate excess!

DL was the most identifiably regional of the majors, smelling of magnolias and dripping Southern charm from every orifice (and armpit) back in the 60s when I started traveling. Back then, it was a "domestic" airline, with little pretense of or aspirations for international service (the bailiwicks of PanAm and TWA), founded in Monroe, LA, and still holding its annual stockholders' meeting there, not yet besmirched by the corporate madness of Atlanta's pretentious upscalism.

The story was that for us Southerners to get to Heaven, we'd have to change planes at ATL, a sprawling "long stroll" terminal on a human scale. DL's stewardae were Southren girls and talked that way, smelled good and could be counted on to deliver the sweetest of music, the brushing together of nylon clad thighs as they passed your row.

I never saw the front cabin in those days, but even in the back of the bus, when some TriDelt from Tuscaloosa used her white-gloved hands to slip you a extra miniature of good whisk(e)y "on the house". I was seduced. DL was the flying mistress of my choice, her young ladies more approachable than the bilingual sophisticates from PanAm who lived "hot bunking" in apartments in Kew Gardens, Queens and flew out of IDL.

The finest flight of my life, an evening "standby", 1971 or so, SFO/DFW, a 747, dress blues with the new gold stripes of a LCDR, coming back from Reserve duty, but mistaken by the DL gate agents to be returning from SEA, put up in the nose FC, to be served prime rib carved to order from a serving cart, and spoiled and ready to be despoiled by the young ladies who seemed to feel the need to tend me and attend to me upon what they believed to be my return from the wars.

Even for me, jaded from half a decade of too many hours in the cabin or back seat of Navy fixed and rotary winged a/c around the Med and in Asia, flying commercially was still a step above the mundane, and the atmosphere created by DL had some of the cachet of colonels and crinolines. I had a friend from Georgia who even claimed that DL was the successor to Confederate Army Air Corps, kept in secrecy for a century in a hot air balloon shed, to provide a haven for Southern road warriors, far more glamorous than the routine efficiencies C. R. Smith was pushing over at AA.

DCFFlyer

I remember the first trip Mr. DCFFlyer and I took together in 1997. It was ATL to Madrid on an L-1011. While waiting for boarding I noticed ground crew opening a panel under the plane and blue water gushing out. We had a mechanical delay of about an hour. So we went back to the First Class Lounge (now the CRC in the E-Concourse). When we arrived in Madrid the flight attendant gave me this huge tin of caviar as a gift.

On the way back to ATL we were the only people in first. The in flight menu was created by Gunter Seegar (I still have it) and the wines were Italian Barlos stacked, starting with a '67.

Mr. DCFFlyer and I, after bubbly and several cocktails, decided to have a tasting of 4 or 5 of the Barolos with dinner. After the FA cleared the tray table of lunch we put all the glasses of wine, about 8 or 10, on Mr DCFFlyer's tray and did a re-enactment of the scene from AbFab where Patsy and Edena were trying wines in a cellar in France. "This is the one. No this is the one." etc. We got the FA to video our re-enactment and at the very end of the clip when Mr. DCFFlyer says emphatically for the last time, "No this is the one!" he picks up a bottle of wine and starts drinking from the bottle. The FA zoomed in on the label-it was a 1967 vintage.

Someday I need to transfer the video and post it to Youtube.

I do agree that the Biz Elite seats were an improvement, but service has never even come close to the level of the old international FC.

Jax Tom

I started flying Delta in 1991 after I moved to Florida.

Various memories:

L-1011-500 in 1991 going from ATL-PDX (the plane continued on to NRT). I remember that one of the meal options ( ! ) in coach was an oriental meal as the flight was continuing on to Tokyo. Even back then I remember flying back from PDX-ATL on the L-1011 flight back and watching some piece of rubber gasket material flapping in the wind on the upper surface of the wing--so maintenance issues were with those Lockeed's even when they were pretty new. The discounted coach fare for a JAX-ATL-PDX-ATL-JAX trip was about $400.

City ticket offices. Jacksonville had at least three, then one, and now none. They were great places as the agents had pretty high seniority, cared about their customers, the lines were short, and you could get in and out of there quickly. This was great in the days before the internet. And related to the city ticket offices, at least in my mind, were the times I was able to get a credit back on my credit card for the fare difference when a lower price came out after I was ticketed--with no penalty fee.

I remember having a choice of dinner entree option in coach on a 737-200 evening flight from CVG-JAX in 1994. Now the meal is gone and its all RJ on that route.

The DFW hub was so big that when the RJ's started to appear on the scene in the early 1990's that they had to build that satellite terminal just for them. Now DFW has barely any service.

My first international flight was on a L-1011-500 from ATL-ORY (Paris Orly) in 1996. The flight was barely half full and I had a row to myself which was great for trying to get some sleep. There was a passenger in the center section of seats that all of the flight attendants kept coming back to talk with and to give things to. Not sure who it was but he looked like he could have been middle management at Delta. I just thought it was interesting that he was in the back on such an empty flight.

I had forgotten all about those SkyDeli bags until I read an earlier reply. Maybe trying to repress a memory? I remember being amazed how tiny those bananas were.

I remember a lot more mainline on domestic routes even after 9/11. OMA-ATL was a frequent route and 727's were most often used, later Md-88s. Even as recently as 2003 I remember lunch in F on that domestic mainline flight of barely 2 hours. Again, the meal and mainline are both gone from that route.

Fares in the mid 1990s weren't that much different from today (or at least until recently). I remember paying $211 RT JAX-OMA in 1997 and until recently was paying not much more than that (even with all the extra fees and such that are added on now.)

Of course, we may be looking back in 15 or so years to the good old days of 2008.

Pharaoh

It wasn't all that long ago that the Orlando minihub was quite active and had a splattering of FLorida destinations after rach medium and long distance wave arrived. And whenever there were problems with that last wave of the day, the FLorida flights were almost always held back for as much as 30 minutes to allow for the connections. On time statistice be dratted. Nobody ever compained ... it could be them next week,

Akulashark

are you posting these in every airline forum?

brazzleman

I always remember the L1011 had an odd smell on take off . . . .

MM/PM widget

The month and year was December 1970 and I was flying with my wife and 2 sons to visit my parents in Charlotte for Christmas. The fare was 70.48 R/T for my wife and I and I believe my older son was 1/2 price and my youngest (just 6 months old) was free (the same exact amount charged by Eastern, as set by the CAB). We connected in Atlanta (of course) and believe it or not we were served a full breakfast on the MCO/ATL leg with real china and silverware and we were on board a Super DC-8 (the long flying cigar). Many times now on this flight the people in coach don't get anything but water "due to the short duration" of the flight. Those were the days I guess the 757's and 767's have had afterburners installed or I guess the 2 cites are actually closer today than they were 38 years ago.

Helena Handbaskets

I was flying TATL in the 70s (Pan Am and TWA), but was too young then to notice some of the details, and what I do remember is visible only through the fog of time and a child's perception. But one thing I do remember from when I started paying attention in earnest (though still a far cry from my current FT-fueled attention) in the late 80s and early 90s is that redeeming miles for a domestic award flight included one or more free hotel nights as well as one or more free car-rental days.

Global_Hi_Flyer

The service was outstanding. The seats were OK. I do like the BE seats better, but the DL seats were as good as the ones on other carriers. As the planes aged, though, the seats became pretty cranky - and DL was one of the later ones to reconfigure the cabin.

in 1991, the L10-500's weren't all that new. They came into service in 1979 IIRC, and the last one was made in '85. At best, that plane was 6 years old and may have been 10-12 years old.

I used to like the partnership with Singapore and Swissair. Used to fly them and get not only full credit but full upgrades. The three-way team had, IMHO, the best airlines together. I've still got a SR Biz Class priority tag on an old suitcase.

Here's an example of the service: We were late arriving at ATL one time. The ground crew called a couple of us out by name, took us down the stairs on the jetway, put us in a waiting car, and drove us directly to our waiting (held) connecting flights. Happened to a friend at the DFW hub, too.