Delta Airlines Serves Shark Fin
Delta Airlines apparently served braised shark fin to celebrate its inaugural non-stop flight from Atlanta to Shanghai. It’s a good thing that officials from the airline and the Governor of Georgia were on hand to underscore their commitment to conservation of the environment. With corporate and political leaders of this caliber, the planet’s in perfectly good hands. Not.
Delta’s inaugural flight lands in China
Gov. Perdue welcomed, state will open trade office in Beijing
By JIM THARPE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/31/08
Shanghai, China — They served Coca-Cola along with the “braised shark’s fin soup with cucumber and fish maw” Monday night at the welcoming celebration for Delta Air Lines’ inaugural non-stop flight from Atlanta.
A blues band belted out “Georgia on My Mind” at a 10-course banquet to celebrate Delta Flight 19, which touched down at 2:09 p.m. local time — the middle of the night back in Atlanta.
“This flight fills a critical void for the 65 million people in the Southeast,” Kenneth Garrett, U.S. consul general for Shanghai, told a crowd of about 200 people at the 88-story Grand Hyatt of Shanghai.
Celebrants included veteran Delta employees on the maiden flight, Chinese officials and about 40 members of a Georgia trade delegation who made the trip. Gov. Sonny Perdue and his wife, Mary, were among them.
Delta’s Atlanta-to-Shanghai run became the first non-stop daily flight to the People’s Republic of China from an air hub in the Southeast, and one of only a handful from anywhere in the nation. Business leaders hope it opens the door to more Chinese investment in metro Atlanta and Georgia.
Perdue later this week will open a state economic development office in Beijing to promote trade between China and Georgia.
Delta Capt. Marc Holmquist, a 32-year veteran of the carrier, gently banked the 777-200ER over Shanghai’s smog-filled skies before bringing the craft in for a smooth touch down to the applause of the 268 passengers aboard. The flight took more than 15 hours and covered 7,659 miles.
Two hours later, the plane had been cleaned and refueled and was back in the air, bound for Atlanta.
The daily flight caps a decade of work by Delta and two earlier failed efforts to secure coveted route rights to China.
Shanghai, with a skyline that equals New York’s, is the bustling financial center of the nation of 1.3 billion people. Much of the metro area of 18 million people has been built in the last two decades.
There was an official airport welcoming ceremony for Perdue and state business leaders, but Chinese officials would not permit journalists traveling with the delegation to photograph the arrival.