Delta One Lounge experience trumps First Class on A321neoRunway Girl

There are few domestic US airline experiences these days that I see as offering something new and exciting. But on a recent trip from New York JFK to Taipei, connecting through Seattle, I found myself in First Class on Delta Air Lines’ relatively new Airbus A321neo for the first leg of the journey.

And because I was traveling on a connecting Delta One ticket, this meant I had access to the new Delta One Lounge at JFK. So my excitement started to bubble up.

Despite having a 7am departure, I was eager to explore the lounge as the buzz around the new space has been overwhelmingly positive. I was not disappointed!

From the moment I stepped into JFK’s Terminal 4, it was clear the Delta One experience has been elevated in recent years. I entered a dedicated Delta One check-in area where I was immediately greeted and escorted to a counter to process my passport.

I inquired if my boarding pass had TSA PreCheck printed on it and was met with a little laugh, followed by a remark about how Delta One passengers need not worry about such things. Sure enough, a private TSA checkpoint was waiting just around the corner.

The new Delta One Lounge is a quick walk from the checkpoint, and the days of waiting in a long line to enter the SkyClub while flying Delta One are clearly a thing of the past at JFK.

My first impression of the new lounge was “wow”.

Delta has designed a beautiful space that seems to ooze premium qualities at every turn, much like United’s Polaris lounges did when the first location debuted years ago.

In my mind the Delta One Lounge feels more premium than United’s Polaris lounges, both visually and by service standards. Indeed, the Delta One Lounge even felt almost overstaffed at 6am, but not in a way that was intrusive.

The restaurant-style dining was not yet open for the day during my visit, but the bakery and “market” buffet counters were more than adequate.

Avocado toast, frittatas, french toast with real maple syrup plus loads of other freshly prepared items were ready and waiting.

Even the coffee bar was something special, with multiple flavored syrups and a hot chocolate mixing station.

After reluctantly departing the lounge I headed to the gate.

Settling into seat 2A in First Class, I was immediately reminded about the rumors concerning the A321neo First Class seat cushions, which are disliked by passengers and are being actively replaced by the airline.

The cushion in my seat was indeed hard as a proverbial rock, so much so that I found myself sitting on a pillow before boarding had even been completed.

It boggles my mind that this issue wasn’t addressed before the otherwise solid product took to the skies.

(But perhaps it shouldn’t boggle my mind. One floating theory is that these seats were specced out during the dark days of Covid, and essential butt-in-the seat testing was perhaps rushed or ignored. Again, that’s just a theory!)

The rest of the seat, including the headrest wings, didn’t seem particularly special to your author. But perhaps the pillow under my butt put me in a persnickety frame of mind! Airbus’ Airspace cabin with its signature hero light remains a show stopper, however.

A few days before departure Delta emailed me a breakfast menu with pre-order options, a welcome feature that enables passengers to secure their preferred dish. Two items were marked as limited “exclusive entrée options curated for this market” and were only available via pre-order.

I gambled on the “Bagel with Salmon Spread” figuring a bagel that had been especially curated for a flight out of New York City might be a good option, maybe even catered from a local bagel shop.

What followed felt like an unforgivable personal attack against all New Yorkers. I have never been served a more disappointing meal in a premium cabin.

The bagel, or three quarters of a bagel, turned out to be nothing more than your generic grocery store-type affair, buttered and toasted many hours before dining and served ice cold with a side of only somewhat redeeming salmon spread.

I asked the flight attendant if the bagel was intended to be served at whatever temperature it emerged from the catering cart and sure enough, it was! She kindly offered to heat it up in the oven, but that would have required removing all other items before she could do so, so I declined.

For the second time on this flight I was left wondering how Delta could allow such a quality issue to occur. Good thing I had filled up with the excellent lounge food!

The rest of the flight was your typical Delta experience. A great selection of movies on the now-discontinued Delta Flight Products inflight entertainment system, with bonus Bluetooth audio connectivity that apparently never made it beyond Delta’s A321neo First Class seat for some reason.

Ironically, the Bluetooth worked better than any other vendor’s Bluetooth solution I have tried so far. The only thing missing was a USB-C port, which shouldn’t be missing from such a newly designed seat.

The free Viasat-powered Wi-Fi performed admirably coast-to-coast, even letting me download videos received in iMessage, when many systems choke on photos.

Overall, Delta’s ground experience excelled while the experience aloft left a lot to be desired. Thankfully, seat cushions can and indeed are being changed and bad catering can be improved.

But for an airline that prides itself on being the premium airline in the US, I am just left wondering how mistakes like this are slipping through the cracks.

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All images credited to the author, Jason Rabinowitz