Mr. Vker

Planning a trip for my 40th to Hawaii. We were leaning towards AA with the NGBC seats. I see now that Delta is flying 747's ATL-HNL. How is the seat and first class service on this flight?

3Cforme

This service hasn't started yet so there are no experiences to share. Details of the seat can be found on nwa.com. NGBC is the AA term. Northwest's trademarked international business service is World Business Class; you will often see the acronym WBC in the NW forum.

http://www.nwa.com/services/bustrav/wbc/seats.html

JJ35LA

All WBC seats on NWA 747's are great. Almost lie-flat seats and AVOD.
Have a nice trip on that now... Big White Bird.

KatGio50

When does this service start?

jbatl

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320))

Will be it be WBC soft and hard product? Or, nice seats with plain 'ol domestic F service?

N830MH

It would be beginning on April 1, 2009 for ATL-HNL will be deployment on 747 aircraft.

SLC777RES

My friend means Apr02

N830MH

Yeah, I didn't realize know for which the date is that.

Billiken

I will be on the 744 service ATL-HNL-ATL on April 10-16.
(Four of us in first class using CO standard award tix..75k miles each.)

Will post re our experience.

N830MH

Great! Let us know how it going for ATL-HNL-ATL on operating 744 aircraft. Please take best photos opportunity onboard the aircraft for me and do write the trip reports details when you can get back home. It would be nice to see more capacity passengers for ATL-HNL-ATL instead of 764 aircraft is already phasing out.

KeaauFlyer

If the load factors on the 744 to HNL don't work out for profitable year-round service, what do some of you knowledgable folks suppose the fall-back aircraft would be?

Robert Leach

That's a very good question. Given that the 744 is replacing two flights a day on 764 (at least, on peak days and during peak seasons), I think the loads will be sufficient.

I would expect to see frequency reduced before you would see an equipment substitution, because with the changeover of all the 764s to an international configuration, there isn't a capable domestically-configured plane to do that route. So, if the 744 simply wasn't working out, and reduced frequencies wouldn't work either, it would mean either:

a) Eliminating the route

b) Downsizing the equipment to another internationally-configured aircraft with the range needed (which means taking them away from international routes that are ostensibly higher yielding)

c) Taking a few of the 763ERs and converting them back to a domestic configuration to run Hawaii routes

N830MH

I just checking the loads for ATL-HNL is doing extremely very well by next week. I'm sure the loads will have filling more passengers for HNL flight instead of 764 aircraft is no longer exist. So otherwise, it would be nice to hear more stuff from DL. What about IFE will have installion in Y class section? I'm sure the loads will be very sucessful routes.

Abidjan

Yes, please - us poor AA sods don't get the 747 experience. Have a great trip.

bocastephen

I'd bank on WBC seats and plain domestic F service (whatever that entails these days) - and if the WBC product malfunctions (i.e. AVOD is not working right), I'm going to guess the response from the inflight crew will be a shoulder-shrug, as it's not officially a WBC product flight.

Only Continental provides a complete J-class product from the US to Hawai'i (seats, lounge access, premium food, entertainment).