FLIGHT REVIEW: Delta Airlines Non-Stop Athens to New York JFK
Aside from a bait-and-switch on aircraft type, a mostly above-average journey
With the exception of one summer only low-cost connection between the West Coast and Athens, there are no non-stop flights between either Los Angeles or San Francisco and the Greek capital. That means a lot of extra hassle and expense for those who don’t live in, say, New York.
JFK is a Delta hub, however, and still offers the best connections to the rest of the country, California included. That made the choice of Delta for a recent flight from Athens to New York pretty obvious — knowing full well that regardless of the class of service, it could never stack up to Emirates.
Fine.
At least I thought I could look forward to traveling on a brand new plane — because when booking the flight on the clunky Delta.com website, the airline advertised the equipment on the route and dates concerned as an A330-900, which belongs to the new A330neo group of Airbus planes.
Only it turned out to be an older A330-300 — not a bad plane but also not a “state of the art” one like the newer A330-900. When contacted about this discrepancy a rep for Delta said that the company reserves the right to change aircraft type as per the conditions of carriage, which is true, but to advertise one plane while providing another is also deceptive marketing.
It’s also repeat behavior from Delta, a company led by clinging-to-woke Ed Bastian, the Gavin Newsom of America aviation. Delta has a habit of keeping older aircraft in service longer than other legacy carriers and no one is suggesting these machines aren’t fit to fly. But it has done this bait-and-switch on other routes too: it advertised a new A220 on a seasonal JFK-Palm Springs route, only to pull it after a few flights, replacing that sleek plane with an older A319. It’s not exactly giving customers what they thought they were getting, but at the end of the day that’s Delta.
Now for the play by play:
CHECK-IN
Smooth, mostly thanks to the friendly Greek gate agents. Athens airport is getting a little overcrowded these days, but next to the god-awful Rome Fiumicino, not so bad.
BOARDING
Also pretty smooth.
SEATS & SUCH
No business class on this fairly last-minute booking. We opted for a so-called Comfort Plus seat, which is supposed to include four extra inches of legroom and an amenity kit that I did not receive (are you supposed to have to ask?) Unfortunately part of the “comfort” is a fairly squishy seat back, meaning every time the probably rude fellow passenger sitting behind you moves her knee you’re going to feel it in your back. Delta doesn’t advertise that part.
It did appear that the seats were a little nicer than in regular economy. Up ahead there was a small “premium select” section, ahead of which Delta One.
Prior to landing a flight attendant, cellphone in hand, came around to personally thank certain passengers for their business, presumably because they had “medallion” status or whatever the company is calling their outmoded loyalty scheme these days. Other passengers, who possibly had to work harder and pay more for their tickets on this air bus, were ignored.
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Actually not bad, above average even for international economy. My tortellini pasta was quite tasty, except for the peas on top. There was some awful-looking grain-type thing instead of a salad and an unappetizing fake tiramisu type thing for dessert, but yeah the entree, not bad. The bread was really bad.
What was nice is that several hours into the flight the flight attendants came by to hand out warm chocolate chip cookies, and these were really good. I asked my flight attendant, who was French, for a second one and she managed to find me one.
Prior to landing, some boxed hot pocket type things were distributed, either pizza margarita or chive chicken. These were ok, but like the entrees, smallish.
IN-FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
Below average. Believe it or not Delta, not everybody is interested in a choice between seeing a Bob Dylan biopic and something with Ariana Grande.
IN-FLIGHT MAGAZINE
None.
BOTTOM LINE
Overall, better than expected and convenient morning departure time. Also, flying to JFK is an advantage over Emirates which from Athens only goes to Newark airport — which is as depressing as the state of New Jersey itself.
As always, Delta is a better option than American, even if it costs a little more.
