Delta Shuttle First Class New York LaGuardia/Marine Air Terminal – Chicago O’Hare – Flight Review
Because of the competitive nature of the New York-Chicago route, Delta serves a substantial lunch for a flight that has passengers in the air for only 100 or so minutes. Once at our cruising altitude of 36,000 feet, the flight attendant began the service, offering beverages and taking our choice of entrees.
I opted for coffee, now that Delta is serving Starbucks, and it was quite good.
The lunch choices were a turkey salad, what was described as sliced turkey breast on a bed of lettuce, or a ham-and-cheese sandwich. Thinking I was opting for the healthy choice, I went for the salad. While the lettuce was crisp and crunchy, the chunks turkey (and they were chunks, not slices) were inexplicably moist and unappetizing. I tasted one hoping for the best and decided to limit my enjoyment of the entrée to the lettuce and the hard boiled egg.
The flight attendant commiserated but was also out of the sandwiches so I had to make do. For such a short flight it wasn’t the end of the world but I had planned to eat during the flight as I had a meeting to go into upon arrival.
The service, however, was excellent and the flight attendant was very attentive to all of her passengers and was constantly in the aisle offering beverages and snacks for the remainder of the flight.
ARRIVAL
We arrived more than half an hour early after a pleasant and uneventful flight. Given my pole position seat, I was first to disembark the aircraft and was in my ride to the McCormick Convention Center – an embarrassingly long and very white late model Lincoln with a two-tier bar that could probably seat ten comfortably – within minutes.
Given the lack of mid-afternoon traffic, I was at the meeting in less than 40 minutes.
BOTTOM LINE
As others in this space have noted, flying the Delta Shuttle out of the Marine Air Terminal harkens not only to the golden age of flying but it’s also as close to flying private as most people will get.
The operation continues a tradition that began with the Eastern Shuttle in 1961 (which later became the Trump Shuttle and is now the American Airlines Shuttle) as well as by New York Air, whose shuttle became the Pan Am Shuttle that inaugurated modern-day service from the Marine Air Terminal in 1986 and continues today as the Delta Shuttle.
I can only hope that Delta steps up its game in the area of first-class dining. Delta’s in-flight meals have typically been quite good but my most recent three experiences bordered on the inedible and I will probably pack my own meal next time and just enjoy the comfort of the seat.
(Photos: Accura Media Group)
