OOOOOOHH Skyteam and Delta Airlines – What have you done?

This is not your father’s Delta.

So I got to experience the new DL Biz Class product. It is on one of the refurbe’d 764s. LHR-ATL DL009

So rather than doing the usual Tim Hughes BOOT assessment of the program – I am going to do a review of the elements that I experienced and how it could improve.

So let me start with the boarding process. Landside – the new DL environment is clearly a very different one. The new refurbished Terminal 4 at LHR is now devoid of BA and QF. (Incidently I arrived 2 days before on the last A380 flight to use the facility for a very long while. The experience was diabolical.)

So T4 is now Skyteam’s new home at LHR. CO and a few other airlines have still to exit but the rest is now sorted and with T1 being Star – it leaves T5 and T3 set to be the home of BA and its OneWorld partners. This marks the first truly integrated major airport that is alliance based. I should refer you to a much earlier post I did early in my blog history – where I described what has actually come to pass.

Anyway the new premium area is not yet open. It will be soon though and looks very nice.

The process of check in – is still a little rough. It will get better. So I made it all the way through. The total departure area landside is really quite nice and quite civilized.

Once past security (lots of people with nothing to do) the terminal is pretty familiar for the regular folks. The gates are a bit small. But the terminal feels unrushed because it is probably only about 30% capacity compared to the prior tenants – probably less. It doesn’t look like there will be much expansion in the near future either. This somewhat begs the question as to why BAA feels it needs a new terminal just now. Anyway I made it to the new Skyteam lounge. WOW! Compared with many other facilities it really is an upgrade. Particularly for DL and AF.

There are some interesting touches – like the Oxygen Bar!!! The staff (Actually Gate Gourmet employees) are not terribly experienced yet. More for looks than functionality is the impression. There were no airline trained staff in the Club area. So don’t expect anyone to help you if you have any service issues. Apart from that there are a few niggles – like none of the PCs/Web terminals have spare power sockets. When will anyone realize that there are two missing ingredients to any business traveler which he regards as vital – power and web access. Cheez!

Once on board – I was treated to a very nice surprise – the brand new seats.

The layout is very good – 1-2-1 staggered so that each person is offset from the people front and back. I have to say that the arrangement works well although I suspect it is not as yield beneficial as say either the BA or UA J class products I have experienced within the last few months.

The seat is a little impractical – the table arrangement leaves a lot to be desired. There is no nicety like the way QF has a place for the water bottle. I somewhat wonder if the table space beside you is the most efficient use of space. The seat is an ALMOST lie flat configuration it feels a little weird but it can work. It is a distinct improvement on the prior product. I believe that from a total space perspective it now beats the BA, AA, UA and CO and OLD QF J class products I have experienced lately.

There are still some areas of improvement – the cleaning left a lot to be desired. The Flight attendants tend to be the same old tired (but very friendly) AFA members. I noticed that there was a lot of assistance required by the passengers to get used to the equipment. Tables etc need a lot of adjustment.

All in all not a bad product. Definitely not your father’s Delta.

Cheers