Bonjour Paris!

Very early this morning (at least for us in Park City) flight 171, a Boeing 767-300 ER, carrying nearly 200 passengers took off from Paris to make history, in-route for Salt Lake City, 5,100 air miles away, where it will land at about 1:50 pm. The flight operated in cooperation with Air France will be the only nonstop service by a U.S. carrier between the western United States and Paris. A Delta’s spokesman said that they’ll start with an 80 percent-plus load factor (percentage of available seats filled by paying passengers.) The Salt Lake-Paris jet is configured with 36 "business elite" seats and 175 coach seats. Delta is also very optimistic that it can make a profit on that flight with oil in the $120 to $130 per-barrel range. If the Paris route proves successful, it may lay the groundwork for opening other routes from Salt Lake to international destinations; for instance, Delta is now very hopeful that when it gets the right airplanes it might connect Tokyo to Salt Lake as early as the spring of 2011…