At 2:20 a.m., while most Salt Lakers are slumbering, a Delta Air Lines jet will lift off from Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris bound for Utah's capital, 5,100 air miles and nearly 12 hours away.

Flight 171, a Boeing 767-300 ER airplane carrying nearly 200 passengers, will pass over England and Ireland, brush by southern Greenland and cross Canada's Hudson Bay before entering U.S. airspace and landing at Salt Lake City International Airport at 1:50 p.m.

"I think about the opening of the hub [Delta operates at the airport] all the way back to when it was started by Western Airlines" in 1982, said Natalie Gochnour, chief operating officer of the Salt Lake Chamber.

"I think about the rebuilding of Interstate 15 and the opening of TRAX light rail and Frontrunner commuter rail. These were transportation milestones that signified a significant new opportunity for residents."

Against that backdrop, and with the arrival of the flight, and the return trip that takes off at 5 p.m., Delta is making good on a promise it made last August to launch the first trans-Atlantic service offered by any airline from Salt Lake to Europe.

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, elevating Salt Lake and Delta's airport hub into the ranks of cities with direct air links to distant corners of the world.

"We are now very much connected in a direct way to all of Europe, and for a very long time that was not the feeling and it was not the reality . . . the importance of that cannot be overstated," said Jason Perry, executive director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development.

Perry will be aboard the flight returning to Paris, along with a coterie of 40 other Utahns representing state government, education and business hoping to cut deals in Europe and talk up Utah tourism.

Although the identities of government officials are public - state Senate President John Valentine, Senate Majority Leader Curtis Bramble and Leigh von der Esch, managing director of the Utah Office of Tourism, figure prominently on the list - many names have been kept secret. Perry said Salt Lake airport officials asked GOED to shield the names of private citizens for security reasons. Most are business people who are paying their own way.

"Who wouldn't want to go to Paris? It's just one of the greatest places on the planet to go," said Tom Guinney, one of the owners of Gastronomy Inc., the Salt Lake-based restaurant chain. Guinney is flying to Paris, where he will mix pleasure and business.

"If you have not seen New York, you cannot understand the United States, and when you go to Paris for the first time, you will be eternally different as an individual. Life won't be the same for you," Guinney said.

Other Paris-bound passengers are likely to be travelers attracted by the $499 one-way promotional fare Delta offered to ignite interest in the flight. Passengers are expected to be from Salt Lake or any other western city Delta serves directly from the Salt Lake hub. Some could be Europeans returning from business trips or vacations.

"It's going great. We are going to run probably an 80 percent-plus load factor right out of the box," said Glen Hauenstein, Delta's executive vice president of network planning and revenue management. "The first week is booked to the mid-70s, but from then on we'll be in the mid-80s."

Load factor is an airline industry measure of how full a plane is. It is the percentage of available seats filled by paying passengers. So, Delta's Salt Lake-Paris jet, configured with 36 "business elite" seats and 175 coach seats, will carry 179 passengers when the plane is 85 percent full.

Hauenstein estimates that about 40 passengers boarding each flight in Salt Lake will be local travelers whose journeys end at Charles de Gaulle International. Another 90 or so people starting their trips in Salt Lake will fly beyond Paris, most likely using Delta or Air France, which flies to more than 200 destinations from its Charles de Gaulle hub.

A third group of about 45 people will fly on Delta or a Delta Connection carrier from around the west to to the Salt Lake hub, where they will transfer to the Paris-bound 767 long-range jet.

Nationalities on other Delta flights between the United States and Europe typically are split evenly between domestic and foreign. That pattern is changing, however, as the dollar continues to struggle against the Euro. Many U.S. vacationers are forgoing Europe, while Europeans are finding the United States to be a bargain.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Euro's strength is helping to offset record crude oil prices that have forced Delta to cut domestic seat capacity by 10 percent this year as the airline continues to shift more to international flying.

"The strength of the European currency and the fuel surcharges have been sticking, and we are actually mitigating the cost of rising fuel on the international arena. On the domestic arena, it's not the same. So I think we are very optimistic we can make profits with oil in the $120 to $130 [per barrel] range," Hauenstein said.

If the Paris route proves successful, it will lay the groundwork for other routes from Salt Lake to international destinations, where SkyTeam partners such as Northwest Airlines have hubs.

"We are very hopeful that when we get the right airplanes, we will be able to connect Narita [Tokyo] to Salt Lake." Hauenstein said that could be as early as spring 2011.

pbeebe@sltrib.com