01. Introduction: Farewell to the domestic Delta Airlines 767-300
02. Delta Airlines 767-300 first class San Diego to Atlanta
03. Delta Airlines 737-900/ER first class Atlanta to Orlando
04. Delta Airlines A321 first class Orlando to Atlanta
05. Delta Airlines 767-300 first class Atlanta to San Diego
2016 hasn’t really been a stellar year of travel for me thus far, and I’m not going to lie when I say that I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that before this trip began, I had only flown 6 segments this year for a grand total of 7,444 miles. Hardly respectable numbers for someone who considers himself to be a hard-core travel junkie, right? The year is half over for crying out loud, so I’ve got to get some trips booked if I want to avoid having this one go down as one of my slowest travel years ever.
Luckily I’ve got family spread all over the US (all in the eastern half), so the need to keep up appearances and stay in touch with everyone requires a bit of air travel. And no, there’s no chance of me driving to and from any of these family visits – I’d certainly love to do a long road trip to Florida, but I just don’t have the time for that kind of thing at the moment. Flying it is!
My annual trips to Florida are usually the same every time. I always fly Delta, and I always fly into West Palm Beach via Atlanta. Over and over and over again – I’ve done it so many times that it almost feels like commuting to me at this point. Interestingly enough, my parents moved to Port St Lucie (well north of Palm Beach) a few months ago, which puts them smack dab in the middle between two decent airports with a wide variety of service options: Orlando (MCO) and West Palm Beach (PBI).
I now have a choice of airports when going to visit my parents! That’s good news considering that MCO is usually a lot cheaper to fly into than PBI and I’m a big fan of saving a buck wherever I can. Additionally, I’ve never been to MCO before so it was the obvious choice for this trip. I love adding new airports to my flight log, so…thanks mom and dad!
Here’s the itinerary for this trip:
07/02/16 DL1592 767-300 first class SAN-ATL
07/02/16 DL897 737-900/ER first class ATL-MCO
07/08/16 DL82 A321 first class MCO-ATL
07/08/16 DL1567 767-300 first class ATL-SAN
It should be noted that when I booked this itinerary, the aircraft scheduled to operate both the ATL-MCO and MCO-ATL segments were the brand-spankin’ new A321’s. But in typical Delta fashion, they swapped to a 737-900/ER on the ATL-MCO segment just a few days before the departure date. That wasn’t really all that shocking to me given how dynamic DL’s fleet scheduling is – they are notorious for last minute equipment swaps like this, and I know all too well that what is booked is never a guarantee of what shows up to the gate with this airline.
One other interesting thing to note about this trip is that I will be flying a pair of domestic-configured non-ER 767-300’s between San Diego and Atlanta. Sadly, these aircraft are at the end of their life with Delta and they are scheduled to be retired at the end of the summer. Not only is it always sad to see domestic widebody aircraft retired from the skies, but it also means that SAN will no longer have domestic widebody service other than the daily Hawaiian A330 to HNL once the season is over. Delta is currently sending multiple 767’s to SAN every day from ATL, so I’m not looking forward to seeing them being replaced by much smaller (and not as interesting) 737-900’s.
Grab your swim trunks and let’s go to Florida!
Josh Walton
Great introduction post to what I’m sure will be a great trip report! Me, as a hardcore planespotter, is also sad to see the Delta 767s leave SAN. I will be going spotting with a friend of mine later this month, and want to know, what time does the 767 arrive at SAN? Really looking forward to this trip report, and enjoy the rest of your summer Scott!
SANspotter
Thanks Josh! Yeah, the DL 767 has been here at SAN for what seems like forever so it’s going to be weird to see it gone for good. Perhaps they’ll fly the A330 here on occasion? Delta moves a TON of people in and out of SAN on a daily basis so it’s hard to imagine them downguaging all the way down to a 739. Perhaps they’ll start using the A321’s in a few years – those things are nice, and I really enjoyed my ride on one on the MCO-ATL segment on the 8th. In addition to the written trip report (with pics), I’ll also be posting a video of that one.
DL1567 (767 from ATL) arrives at about 6pm, so that’s pretty good evening light this time of year for getting decent pics. Good luck!
Kevin
Where are you getting your information? Delta still has 6 domestic 767’s flying. I believe two of these A/C are around 10 years old. I don’t see them going anywhere.
SANspotter
I had heard they retired all but 4 around September of last year – so it’s good to know that there are actually 6 still flying! Anyway, I’m not sure how often we will see them here at SAN anymore, since they are needed on much more dense routes such as ATL-LAX/SFO/HNL/etc.
Kevin
They are still flying from SAN. Just saw one last week!
SANspotter
Yeah, Delta really surprised me by continuing to fly the domestic 763 to SAN after retiring most of them late last year. Just goes to show you how much lift DL has out of SAN and how important of a station it is. Perhaps we’ll see some A330’s here occasionally? We’ll have to wait and see!
Josh Walton
I almost got on one, but they swapped it to an A321! Oh well, at least it was brand new, and I was in first class, so I had just as much fun!
SANspotter
Yeah, the A321’s are nice, aren’t they? They are going to be everywhere soon!