Starting another “Planespotting at LAX” series (flights I saw arriving and departing on Sunday, November 23rd) this week with this flight on Delta’s long-haul flagship. This summer, Delta Air Lines resumed service between Los Angeles and Shanghai after a half-decade hiatus. Before service was suspended in 2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the airline served China’s largest city with the Boeing 777-200ER from LAX, in addition to services from DTW and ATL with the 777-200LR. With the retirement of the 777 fleet in 2020, the A350-900 filled the gap nicely. Currently, all PVG services from LAX (resuming after a false start last year), SEA (replaceing the A330-900neo), and DTW are operated by the type, with it remaining to be seen if ATL service begins again. Today, we’ll be traveling to Shanghai in one of the A350’s Delta One business class suites again.
Server: Solo
Airline: Delta Air Lines
Aircraft: Airbus A350-900
Origin: Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California (LAX)
Destination: Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Pudong, China (PVG)
Flight Number: DL39
Route: KLAX-ZSPD
Seat: 10D (Delta One)
Time En Route: 14 Hours 25 Minutes
Boarding at the Tom Bradley International Terminal after getting a pizza for lunch. While increasingly more of Delta’s long-haul flights are operating out of the revamped Terminal 3, quite a few still use the TBIT. Also, T3 isn’t open yet in Infinite Flight, meaning even a somewhat-accurate trip report has to use the International Terminal.
Got a long taxi to Runway 25R for takeoff. Traffic at LAX has been somewhat odd lately, vis-a-vis what runway certain flights are using. As we head to the south side of the field, we’ve got a good look at the United Airlines maintenance ramp…which has a few American Airlines 787s on it. Seems the American maintenance hangar is closed for maintainence! Further down, the Delta ramp looks empty and the Qantas facilities have a 787-9 on the ramp and one partially sticking out of the hangar.
Loud Trent 1000 WXB takeoff from LAX! We’re taking off in parallel with a JetBlue A321-200 going to Fort Lauderdale as B6600.
Climbing over the Santa Monica Mountains. It’s a much clearer day than it was this time last week, with everything down to Newport Beach visible out of our window.
In cruise over the East Bay as we prepare to leave the West Coast behind us. We had a second lunch today, braised beef served with carrots, snow peas, beech mushrooms, bell peppers, onions, and steamed white rice. The food was, as usual for Delta One, delicious.
Late afternoon over the Bering Sea. The clear weather from L.A. has persisted as we’ve headed north, producing a beautiful sunset as we cruise along at FL340.
Approaching the cirrus layer as we descend over the East China Sea. The second half of our journey has been one of constantly chasing the sunset, a sight so beautiful that we decided to forgo sleep, which is unusual for a long-haul trip report.
Landing on Runway 34R at PVG in the early evening, after the Sun has finally slipped out of sight
Taxiing to our gate past Terminal 1, which handles Air China, Juneyao Air, and most non-SkyTeam domestic and international flights. It’s been an exciting and enjoyable flight, and a route we’ll be trying out again in the future.
Deplaned at Gate 19 at Terminal 2 next to another Delta A350-900 boarding for Seattle as DL280 and a China Eastern 787-9 being prepared to go to Melbourne as MU737. Our aircraft will leave to go back to LAX in a few hours, before operating one of several daily flights to ATL as DL782 the next morning and continue from there to Cape Town, South Africa as DL210. As for us, we’ll be catching a bit of R-and-R in Shanghai before coming back to the States on a China Airlines A350.