Coach sucks. But Delta is trying to take the sting out of those tiny seats with the thing that assuages misery better than all other things: booze.
The Atlanta-based airline is aboard certain regional flights. It鈥檚 a tactic deployed in recent years by rival carriers. (Southwest offers Fat Tire, for example.) But Delta is going a step further to highlight the locality of craft beer by stocking brews that mesh geographically with the airline鈥檚 flights. 鈥淲e wanted to be thoughtful about how we approached it,鈥 says Brian Berry, director of Onboard Services and Strategic Planning for the brand.
If you fly to Boston from D.C. or New York, you鈥檒l have your choice of suds from either or . If you鈥檙e flying on a San Francisco to L.A. shuttle, you鈥檒l get to choose from Lagunitas or Stone Brewing. And if you鈥檙e on a transcontinental flight, you can pick from either or .
Even better, the brews on the East- and West-Coast shuttles are complimentary. The ones on transcontinental and southeast flights cost $7.
When Delta first planned this promotion, it worried whether small, independent brewers would be able to keep up with the mega-airline鈥檚 demand. That was one of the first things Delta officials asked Newburyport Brewing Company鈥檚 co-founder and CEO, Chris Webb, when they approached him about partnering up. He says that he never doubted that his one-and-a-half-year-old brewery could pull through.聽
鈥淲e shipped our three styles to Delta for them to try, and we received a call several weeks later saying they鈥檇 chosen our Newburyport Pale Ale,鈥 he says. The hoppy, American-style pale ale is now being served at 40,000 feet, and Webb hopes it will entice some frequent flyers to become frequent Newburyport drinkers, too. 鈥淲e hope when people land they鈥檒l go to the local liquor stores鈥攐r a packy, as they鈥檙e called in Massachusetts鈥攁nd buy it.鈥
Berry says that craft beer is just one of several initiatives Delta is embarking upon to differentiate the airline as a lifestyle brand. 鈥淲e鈥檙e a big company. The expectation that comes with that is that we鈥檙e not going to be innovative. But we are. The first step is to put craft beer and regional, seasonal fare on planes. We don鈥檛 believe that eating onboard has to be a bad experience.”
That鈥檚 definitely one of those things we鈥檙e going to have to see to believe, but free craft beer seems like an excellent place to start.