I promise to get to my review of my last round trip to Sweden posted soon (including Virgin Atlantic upper class) but for now I wanted to at least give you my thoughts on the new DeltaONE seat pre-flight dining option at the “F” Sky Club in Atlanta.
When you are flying DeltaONE a.k.a. business class or the old business elite seats you are, when you check in at the Sky Club, handed one of these menus you see above with your name and are told to put them BLACK side up when you are ready to order. Sounds great. However, in practice I had a number of Sky Club out sourced people again and again ask me if I was ready to order. Nice, I guess, but not what I was told by the Delta people would happen. More training is clearly needed.
The choices were simple either the meat or vegetarian dining options. Each sounded really impressive but…
As you can see like so many things Delta the build up did not quite meet the expectation. Let me break it down.
- The pulled pork slider was quite good but tiny. I would have loved to have had two.
- The slaw was OK. Again, very tiny portion.
- The watermelon salad was fresh and good for what there was.
- The dessert was “meh” at best. Very under whelming and really a pass.
- The wine. I did not try the white and stuck with the new Sky Club free red choice.
Those are the bullet points of this new offering from DeltaONE. More thoughts. Again, this is a good attempt. The flavors, most of them, were not all bad but just very tiny in amounts. I think they need to work on offerings a bit and if you just want an appetizer before your flight then this is what you want. This is NOT a “light meal” before your flight if you want to go right to sleep.
One of my biggest pet peeves about DeltaONE and Delta business class meals is the horrendously ugly faux wood trays. They remind me of a double wide trailer panel. They are so hideous and most times dirty that they turn my stomach to even see them. Now we have them in Sky Clubs – Joy! Really Delta?
If you are wondering about the plastic cups, compared to the nicer new tallish wine glasses I saw in the MIA club, I was told the dishwashers were broken. If you spend any amount of time in the Sky Clubs in ATL you will see this is not unusual and I seem to find clubs with broken dishwashers at least once a month (if not more). You would think for the $29+1 upcharge Delta has been soaking flyers for over a year now that they would have enough cash to pay for a good commercial dishwasher in the clubs.
I was really excited about this upgrade to DeltaONE service and was hoping it would be more. Yeah, just “more”.
It seems like so much Delta this year (think LAX DeltaONE check-in etc.) that Delta is trying to really make what they have look the best it can and trying to show it all off as a “real” 1st class product. Dearest Delta, you are not Lufthansa. A Sky Club is NOT the 1st class terminal in Frankfurt. A Delta Porsche ride now and then is fun but car service is not a standard part of the journey.
I think they should dump this experiment. They should keep putting the money into better food choices for everyone and the better quality complementary drink choices like you are doing with the local craft beer choices. Either that or, take this concept to the next level, and offer a real meal choice for those who want to dine before a flight and go right to sleep once onboard. – René
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