Delta Connection E175 (SkyWest) Trip Report
Flight Details
Departure Airport: Duluth International Airport (DLH/KDLH)
Arrival Airport: Minneapolis - Saint Paul International Airport (MSP/KMSP)
Aircraft: Embraer E175LR (N293SY)
Airline: SkyWest dba Delta Connection
Flight Number: DL3686/SKW3686
Flight Time: 36 minutes
Server: Very expert
Routing:
I started out this morning around 10:30 AM at the Duluth International Airport’s James L. Oberstar Terminal. The building, constructed in 2015, is extremely pleasant and modern, is named for the Congressman that represented the area for a long period of time (1975 - 2011) and was the chair of the United States House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, making an airport named in his honor a fitting tribute.
Clearing TSA was about a 5 minute process, and soon I was in the airside area. DLH has just four gates, a cafe/gift shop, and some vending machines. Despite this, it’s actually a nice place to wait around. The seating is plush and plentiful and there’s no shortage of outlets. Unlike a lot of regional airports, it seemed very well cleaned and there was plenty of natural light pouring in. Despite the relatively few commercial flights that Duluth services daily, it’s not a dead airport at all. There was a constant stream of training aircraft (not only do flight schools based in Duluth use the airport, but it’s a popular spot for the incredibly busy University of North Dakota planes to do cross country flights to). Additionally, being the home to Cirrus, there were about a dozen Cirrus planes taking off and landing in the time I was there. I’m not sure if they were coming in for maintenance or leaving for delivery, but it was fun to watch regardless. Duluth is also the location of the Minnesota Air National Guard’s 148th Fighter Wing, so their infrastructure and operations keep things alive too.
My plane arrived from Minneapolis right on time, shortly before a CRJ-550 in from Chicago. The turnaround was highly efficient - they seemed to have the entire plane unloaded in under 5 minutes, despite it being what appeared to be a full flight.
We began boarding exactly at 11:32, which is what Delta advertised as our boarding time in the app. I’m very curious as to why it was so specifically 11:32, and not just 11:30. Anyways, getting onto our aircraft was an expeditious process, and soon enough I was settling into seat 15A. Much to the chagrin of aviation enthusiasts worldwide, the E175’s window placement is absolutely abysmal. You have to lean quite far forward or back to be able to see out, and even then it’s not great. You’ll notice that all my photos have a bit of the window bezel - that’s because I didn’t want to stick my phone super far into the person in front of me’s seat.
The taxi for takeoff was about 30 seconds, and we were rolling down Runway 27 a bit ahead of schedule.
The initial climb through the cloud deck was quite rough, but things got better as we climbed higher. We cruised unusually “high” today, at 20,000 feet. Typically, this flight settles out around 16,000 feet, but I suspect we were trying to avoid as much of the turbulence as possible. As to be expected on such a short run, there was no service for us back in economy today. However, it seemed like the people in First Class were offered a drink and snack from the basket.
Delta is working to roll out free and fast WiFi across their entire fleet (including the regional jets, apparently), but that wasn’t yet installed on our particular airframe. There was an option to pay $10 for WiFi coverage (ridiculous for half an hour, I think, especially given the fact that it only works above 10K feet), or use the free messaging service, which didn’t work at all. It’s a bit unfortunate, but not the end of the world. These regional jets rarely fly for more than two hours at a time, so going without entertainment is not the end of the world.
After just a few minutes at cruise, it was time to begin our approach into Minneapolis. The crew came through to collect trash, and before I knew it, we were softly touching down on Runway 30R.
Due to our landing runway, it was a very short taxi across the busy apron to Gate C8 before being able to deplane. Overall, this was a good way to travel short distances. From a passenger experience, it’s probably preferable to the CRJ-900s, which also operate on this route, but you’re only going to get so much on such a quick ride.
Flight Rating:
Crew: 8/10
Cleanliness: 9/10
Service: 10/10 (couldn’t have reasonably expected more)
WiFi: 1/10
IFE: N/A (nobody can expect IFE on an E-jet)
Landing: 8/10