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Some Eye of the Flyer friends joined my wife and me for the inaugural trip of Delta Air Lines’ now-longest domestic flight: Boston (BOS) to Honolulu (HNL).
We booked the trip soon after it was announced this past March. Inaugural flights are special. Passengers who intentionally take them are excited. The airline employees working the flights are (usually) excited. There’s a fun energy and celebratory atmosphere.
I took Avelo Airlines’ first two revenue passenger flights. I also flew on Delta’s first revenue flight of their A321neos. Delta invited me to the relaunch celebration of their Los Angeles (LAX) to Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) route. Each event was fun and special. (For the A321neo event, Delta practically convinced people they invented not only the aircraft but aviation itself.)
This was my wife’s first inaugural flight — her inaugural inaugural, if you will. She was curious to see what all the hubbub is about these special trips — and immediately understood when we showed up for the party.
I wasn’t sure if Delta would make a big to-do about the Boston to Honolulu inaugural. A Delta spokesman told me no one from corporate communications would attend. (There were at least one or two PR folks at the A321neo and LAX-CDG events.)
Maybe it would be “just another flight” without any accompanying hoopla.
Much to our delight, it wasn’t.
Delta Inaugural Flight Party: Boston to Honolulu
Delta flight DL438 to Honolulu boarded from Boston Logan gate E15 — waaaay at the end of Terminal E, where most widebody international flights depart. (Our post about the flight will explain how to get there.)
Here’s what greeted us:
There were plenty of balloon pineapples and palm trees throughout the area.
Each passenger received an imitation lei. (We learned a lesson on cultural sensitivity upon arriving in Honolulu. We’ll save that for the post about our flight itself.)
Delta served some sweet treats.
They also poured “Million Miler Mai Tai Mocktails.” They tasted almost exactly like the real thing!
Here are the ingredients if you want to make them at home (we will!).
Something fun about nearly every inaugural flight: a few passengers have no idea they booked an inaugural. They’re on the flight because they actually need or want to travel to the destination. (These people didn’t go out of their way to fly thousands of miles just to take this specific flight? Can you imagine that?! 🙂 )
And it’s fun when they arrive at the gate. Their eyes suddenly widen and they get a “What the….?” look on their faces. One couple appeared to be taking their honeymoon and thought it was super cool that they ended up on the inaugural.
A couple of Delta representatives spoke.
We learned that Boston is home to 1,500 Delta employees(!). From Boston, Delta flies as far east as Athens. Honolulu is as far west as it travels from Bean Town. (And that’s the longest domestic flight in the Delta network.)
Our flight’s pilots and cabin crew posed for pictures.
We posted this to Xitter and it’s something I’ll repeat at least few times: our cabin crew was phenomenal. They all seemed to enjoy themselves. There were plenty of smiles and laughs. The service was great. But we’ll discuss that more in a separate post.
Absolutely stellar @Delta crews in Boston, on board our flight to Honolulu, and on the ground here at HNL. An unforgettable day. We’re excited to write about it and share pictures in the next few days! #JobWellDone #KeepClimbing
And always a treat hanging with @CKaway!
— Eye of the Flyer ✈️ (@EyeOfTheFlyer) November 22, 2024
Finally, some Delta employees, the pilots, cabin crew, and Eye of the Flyer friends(!) Larry, Nina, and Christine participated in the ceremonial ribbon cutting.
(OK, OK. They’re friends who were invited to cut the ribbon because they’re multi-Million Milers. I don’t think their being friends of ours had anything to with it. But do yourself a favor and follow my friend Christine Krzyszton. She’s a great travel writer.)
A few minutes later, our boarding passes were scanned and we found ourselves going down an escalator (I wasn’t expecting that twist!) to the jetway.
Final Approach
Delta threw a great party for its inaugural Boston to Honolulu flight. We’ll detail the BOS-HNL journey in another post very soon.
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I’m a little surprised that Delta doesn’t fly Boston to Seoul or Tokyo. Maybe they don’t want to cannibalize Atlanta and Detroit traffic to Asia, but it seems like there would be a market. Then again, Delta doesn’t fly New York to Tokyo. Well, it did. But it was ended before the pandemic.
It was such a great time, and the 11-hour flight went by quickly. Delta did a great job of making the event special. Thanks for the mention, Chris, it was fun hanging out and I look forward to the next adventure.
“the 11-hour flight went by quickly”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that before!
Seriously, it did not seem like 11 hours. I took a few 20 minute naps to refresh myself between some reading and then writing some stuff. But I didn’t sleep nearly long enough to make a substantial dent in the trip. Maybe we were excited and having a good time (our cabin crew was a blast!). Mrs. Carley and I had a list of household and holiday tasks to discuss — and that took about an hour. (It’s amazing what you can accomplish when turn off your phone and internet and there aren’t any family members — such as a seven-year-old — to distract you). But my wife and I were like, “That was 11 hours?!” I’ve been on shorter trips that seemed like 11 or 12 hours.
Looks like fun was had by all!! When is the next inaugural flight to??? anywhere via Delta?
I saw a few familiar faces in the crowd…..
PS Hope they served real Mai Tai’s on the plane.
They did not.
Sad. I still have umbrellas from Mai tai’s on delta flights to Hawaii!
I was very excited about this routing as I live in Hawaii and most of my family is in New England and Alaska/Hawaii flies this route 5x/week. Unfortunately,, it looks like Delta will end this flight on 4/30/25, transferring the aircraft to a more profitable route. Hopefully, the powers that be decide to keep the flight year round. As an aside, one can’t book HNL-LAX-BOS with lie flat the whole way online. Seems the only way to do this is by phone.