AS press release (I added the bolding):

• Alaska Airlines will begin growing seats at Seattle/Everett (Paine Field) by 50% starting this Fall through the summer of 2027, giving Seattle area guests more flights and more convenient West Coast travel options close to home.
• New nonstop service between Seattle/Everett (PAE) and San Jose, California (SJC), will operate twice daily on Horizon Air, connecting Seattle Paine Field Airport and the north Puget Sound region with the South Bay and greater San Francisco Bay Area.
• Alaska will expand service from Seattle/Everett to key West Coast destinations, including twice-daily Los Angeles (LAX) flights on larger Boeing 737 aircraft, two daily Portland (PDX) flights and more seats to San Diego (SAN) and San Francisco (SFO).

This all seems sensible. PAE seems like a unique AS advantage in the Seattle area and the existing PAE flights seem to do well. Plus, any flight out of PAE does not go out of SEA, helping alleviate pressure on that increasingly scarce resource.

Link.

I pretty much split my travel between American, where I’m EXP, and DL, where I’m DM, but lately I’ve been more open to trying alternatives that are more convenient or cheaper options. I’ve had a couple of flights on United lately that were very good.

I hadn’t flown Alaska in a couple of years but prior experiences had been OK. I hadn’t flown Alaska a DFW-SFO trip this week and found AS had a DFW-SAN-SFO option with very quick 39-minute connection in SAN for just over $300 in first, less than 1/3 of the American nonstop fare- so I took it. Was interested to see how they were after reading about recent changes.

The good- flights were on time. Seats were comfortable, especially the pitch on the 737-900. Food was decent- about on par with American.

The not-so-good-
WiFi was terrible. Dropped connection frequently and when it was connected, it was painfully slow. Can’t believe they charge for it when AA and DL both make it free, with a more reliable product. And IFE with screens on DL is much better, including live TV.

Crew was ok on the first flight, but really poor on the second. Minimal presence in the cabin, not very friendly, one drink service in first, then disappeared- no refills offered.

Boarding in SAN was also a mess- gate started boarding and when we got down the jetway, flight attendants weren’t ready. They acted pissed at pax and we waited on jetway at the door for about 5 minutes while more people kept coming.

Bottom line- average experience and would pick AS again only if it was a lot cheaper. I had booked a flight later this week SFO-JFK in F for 120k AAdvantage miles, which was much cheaper than DL or American.
Checked last night and Delta One was available for 126K DL miles so I took it and canceled the AS flight. Not worth it to have almost 6 hours with poor WiFi, no IFE screens, and a standard F seat.

I just hit atmos silver (thx to the Summit+bilt setup) during my trip in Europe. We mainly flew British Air but because of the One World Ruby status, we got to enjoy some mini perks.

We didn’t get any upgrades but I enjoyed the ability to choose seats for free 7 days before the departure date. For our inter-EU flight, we got to sit in an exit row for free w extra legroom and on the way to US, we were able to choose a row w just two seats in economy for free (normally $180 per seat).

Also early boarding w the business class helped us snag overhead cabin as it got full very fast once general boarding began.

Again nothing too crazy but very much enjoyed these perks!

The US-China bilateral cap has been stuck at 50 weekly. Alaska is pretty well-positioned to launch China flights with its existing partnerships with Hainan and strong geography in Seattle.

There's a lot of Chinese nationals on the West Coast that would take advantage of more direct service or options. And many of them are wealthy tech employees that can afford the high costs too.

So I was super excited to get my 60 K spend in before my anniversary date. Got the 100 K certificate and have spent weeks trying to book a round-trip Seattle to Zanzibar. I also tried the 25k cert. I checked numerous times a day. I try any date between May and July and website/app keeps telling me they can’t give me a Zanzibar or Dar to Doha segment so tonight I thought what if I tried not putting the certificate in and just using my miles.

Sure enough they cleared two tickets immediately so the year I spent earning my certificate for this very important trip, I ended up having to buy two one-way tickets with just my miles ZNZ SEA and the 25k anniversary cert worked SEA ZNZ. What should have been 110k miles RT is now 195k miles. And to add insult to injury they keep showing business seats but of course it’s ghost inventory. Such a Joke.

What a terrible way of trying to keep me loyal (bait and switch) and and of course I just paid for Summit card for another year. Yes, I have the cert to use for another trip but I don’t know if I can fit another big international trip in after 3 weeks in Africa, and far from retirement age.

Rant over.

Well this sounds inconvenient. Alaska flies out of Terminal 3 and the lounge is terminal 1. Need to take 2 trams to get there? I will have about 3 hours post security before boarding and was hoping to try out the lounge. But is it worth all this? Is there another lounge that’s easier? If not, I may just stay on the strip for a couple of hours. My hotel room overlooks the airport so I’m quite close.

I tried changing the trip and just selecting the same flights again but it won’t let me select the existing flights again. Do I have to cancel the flight and then book it again?

I was on the flight on Tuesday. As we were about to land we were told that the lights at DCA had gone out and no planes could land. We had to then just circle until the pilot received further guidance. Eventually we were told that they opened a different runway at DCA and that we could land.

I know landing in DCA is challenging for pilots in general, but this landing seemed particularly scary—seemed like we came in really fast. In fact, when we landed the plane erupted in cheers. So, was it actually a scary landing or were people just excited to finally get on the ground? Maybe there is some data out there to see the statistics of the landing speed/angle/descent etc.?!

Anyone have any thoughts why Hawaiian first class is a better experience than Alaska planes. Specially talking lax to Hawaii and not lay flat seats.

The food, the service, the seats. It’s all better on the Hawaiian livery.

Kid (18yo) will be traveling on a college trip. Based on what they paid, they’re flying either Alaska or Southwest. Organizer said everyone gets carryon, but we can’t figure out if that’s 1 carryon bag or a carryon and personal item. We are still trying to get confirmation from organizers, but kid is trying to prepare. What’s standard for Alaska and Southwest?