atlanta

Ferrari and Porsche on display at CPH for some sort of contest.

Heading home after two weeks in Europe. Last week was a class in Helsinki, so the outbound flight was MSY-DTW-AMS-HEL. I took an SAS hop flight from Vantaa Airport in Helsinki to Copenhagen, then flying home from here. My class was actually in a small suburb north of the city proper, so I had to rent a car this week to drive to the office. The return trip to the airport was about 35km. I had the added duty of returning the rental car this morning, so I left about 7am, and was done with the Avis desk just before 8am.

Copenhagen Lufthaven (CPH) is Every Airport In Europe. The ticket desks are numbered, and monitors tell you which range of numbers is for your airline as you enter. After dropping off the car at Terminal 3 (which is where I arrived from HEL last Saturday), I walked over to Terminal 2, just like the monitors told me to do. The Delta section was well-organized, and they led me to the "elite" line. Like the Dutch, the Danes actually interview you as they check your passport for departure. Once that was done, on to actual check-in, which had no one waiting. The Delta ticket agent was a charming lady who got my boarding passes as we casually chatted. She directed me to security and the lounge, and I was done.

Security at CPH was standard, and no removal of shoes. I'm guessing I'll have to do that at the gate. They did search my bag, though, not surprising, given how many cables I carry. Security cleared, I made my way through the obligatory duty-free extravangaza, down a corridor lined with banks, souvenier shops, and upscale shops like Gucci, etc. The SkyClub here is a common lounge for a number of airlines run by a company called Novia. Their wireless is a disaster-I got on for all of three minutes, but at least that was enough time to see e-mail and no there are no crises in North America. What the lounge lacks in wi-fi, they make up for in food. This is Denmark, so there's no shortage of Danish pastry, and a good coffee system that makes a decent cappuccino. Now it's off to the gate.

DL69 - CPH-ATL

Even though I was in Business Elite class (up front in the comfy chairs), I didn't pull out the laptop. If you're going to eat, navigating the computer and the food tray is just too difficult. This flight was on a B767-300ER, and I was in 3A. I prefer window seats so I don't have to get up to let the other person out to the toilet. It was warm on the plane, a good indication that spring is here. Front-cabin fliers are offered orange juice or champagne (and when flying from Europe, it's truly Champagne, not sparkly from another country) while getting settled and looking over the dinner menu. Just before takeoff, your dinner order is taken. Delta offers three entrees, and today's choices were chicken parmesan, file with peppercorn sauce, and a cold roast beef plate. The starters were smoked salmon and hummus, a lettuce-and-tomato salad, and cream of mushroom soup. Neither entree moved the earth for me, so I went with the steak.

Right after takeoff, the flight attendants pass out hot towels, then little dishes of nuts, while taking your first drink order.

Not long after that, the starters come out. The soup was quite good.

The steak, for once was medium-rare-to-medium, not too overcooked. I had a nice Argentine white, a Torrantes, before the meal and with the soup, and a Chilean red with the steak.

I usually get the cheese plate and some port for dessert, but today I went for the ice cream with berry sauce and whipped cream.

After the ice cream, I had some dessert wine, a couple of glasses of Semillion.

With the meal cleared away and the episode of "The Tudors" I had on the video system winding down, I put the seat as horizontal as I could and phased out. I got about 4.5 hours of sleep, then put the seat up and flipped through some of the HBO stuff in the video system.

About an hour out from ATL, they fed us a snack. The choices were a shrimp salad or a hot turkey-and-cheese sandwich. I had the sandwich, and it was OK. I washed it down with some more of the Argentine white. Dessert was a chocolate truffle.

Pretty soon it was final approach, and that means putting away everything. I read a bit, filled out the customs card, and we were on the ground. The plane parked at E6, and I was through CBP (Customs & Border Protection) in no time flat. Now waiting for my 8:15pm flight to home!

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Charles De Gaulle Airport, Paris

February 9-10, 2010, were bad-weather days in the city of Atlanta, GA. The "snowpocalypse" that gripped the east coast for more than a week by then had come to Peachtree Street. Worse yet, it had come to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, ATL. Several thousand flights were cancelled from Tuesday to Thursday of that week, and things were still pretty chaotic by the time I was to leave for Zuerich on Saturday the 13th.

I booked an afternoon MSY-ATL flight for that Saturday, a bit of a departure from my usual get-out-early strategy. There's usually an 11:30am or so flight to ATL that I'll book, but this day, I took one with a departure time of 1:50pm. I was very lucky in this regard, because the first two flights of the day were cancelled, because the planes weren't at MSY. The mess the snow and weather made of Delta's largest hub placed a lot of their equipment out of position on Friday and Saturday. The flight I booked was coming from ATL just two hours before my flight, doing a fairly standard ATL-MSY-ATL run.

While there was lots of chaos around me, with Delta ticket agents furiously trying to re-book people from Friday as well as the two early flights that day, I was able to check in and wait in the SkyClub with little delay out front. The flight was 15 minutes delayed in taking off, but it was the 30 minute delay trying to find a gate to park at and someone to open up the plane that created all sorts of problems for me. The flight parked on "C" concourse, and I had less than 15 minutes to get from "C" out to "E" where my ATL-ZRH flight as parked. Naturally, I missed boarding by about ten minutes.

I don't know if I was just fortunate to have an efficient and sympathetic gate agent because of my Platinum status, but I like to think he would be nice enough to take care of anyone in this predicament the same way, but I was quickly re-routed to Zuerich via Paris-Charles De Gaulle Airport. Air France had a 6:30pm flight to CDG, and then I could easly connect from there on a commuter jet to ZRH.

So, in this case, the lemonade made from this mess of a flight day tasted pretty good. Air France flights to CDG always have better food than Delta flights to Europe. Walking across Paris (which is what it feels like at CDG) to get from the international terminal to the hop-flights isn't all that bad after sitting down for eight hours. The only serious downside to missing the Delta flight was that my bag didn't get transferred to the AF flight; it came in on the Sunday evening flight and was delivered to my hotel at some point while I was teaching Monday. It's been a while since I had to teach in my sweats, but the class had a sense of humor.

The return journey at the end of the week was quite uneventful, and that was just fine by me! The bus line that ran right past the hotel went all the way to ZRH, so I took the bus at 7:30am and was at the airport for 8am. Check-in went smoothly, and I slept through the main meal, not waking up until they were offering me that microwave cheese pizza Delta serves as a snack about an hour before landing. I had on my "Saints Super Bowl Champs" t-shirt on the trip, so I cleared ICE with ease. The ATL-MSY flight was a comfortable hour in first class, which was welcome after the long ride in a coach seat.

Looking forward to my next trip to Switzerland.

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