A Week+ in the Life of a Delta 777-200LR, 9 Days, 16 Stops, 4 Continents

by Adam

Every wonder where that 777-200LR was before you boarded it for your flight? Delta’s new blog had a feature last week that followed one 777-200LR for 9 days, during 16 stops, over 4 continents. With permission, a tale of ship 7109:

a screenshot of a flight information

Tale of a Tail: Ship 7109. – Ship 7109, which came off the assembly line in March 2010, carried nearly 3,900 passengers to destinations as far as Johannesburg, Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong and Sydney during its nine-day voyage; in fact, this plane clocked more than 168 hours and 86,000 miles on its “aerodometer.” During that time, 50 pilots sat at the controls of the Boeing jet that weighs nearly three-quarters of a million pounds fully fueled. Each of those pilots have an average of 25 years of flying experience with Delta and more than half got their wings in the military. Ship 7109 carried more than 420,000 pounds of cargo and airmail, including: gold bars; fresh cut Colombian-grown flowers delivered to Johannesburg and Dubai; berries picked in Mexico and flown via Los Angeles International Airport to Tokyo; and tropical fish from the Philippines enroute to Southern California. Of the 162 inflight crew members who boarded the aircraft during the nine-day voyage, 37 were fluent in Japanese, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic and Cantonese, among others. They kept our passengers safe and comfortable while serving more than 6,100 meals as well as countless drinks and snacks. And if you’re wondering how much fuel Ship 7109 used to fly 86,600 miles, it was just over 375,000 gallons. But with the aircraft carrying an average of 244 passengers on each flight, the widebody jet got more than 55 miles per passenger per gallon – better than many hybrid vehicles on the road.

Related – Trip Report DL 777-200LR ATL-JNB / JNB-ATL Business

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4 comments

Craig June 10, 2013 - 2:41 pm

Too bad they didn’t share the revenue info as well.

Reply
Darren June 10, 2013 - 3:10 pm

I geek out on stuff like this… thanks for posting. And oh my yes, @Craig – I’d love to know the revenue draw.

Reply
HR June 10, 2013 - 5:35 pm

I have probably flown this one on JNB-ATL sector. One of the top 5 longest flights in the world and a nightmare if you happen to be in the 1st row in Economy Plus!

Reply
Boon June 11, 2013 - 10:41 am

Using the “55 miles/pp/pg” metric is a it disingenuous I would say.

Using that logic 2 parents and 4 kids in a Suburban driving around a city (worst case) for 100 miles gets 60 miles pp/pg

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