The Good And The Bad Of Today's Alaska Airlines Trip To LA

You don't need to read this.  I just need to get it out of my system.  

We had tickets (from Anchorage) to Seattle for 10:35am getting to Seattle at 3:11pm (You lose an hour going Anchorage to Seattle)

Then an LA leaving at 4:56pm arriving in LA at 7:45pm

The first delay notice was to 11am departure.

Then 12:20pm

Then 3:00 pm

We had this experience about a year and a half ago trying to catch a non-stop to Chicago.  After many delays, the flight was cancelled and we had to fly through Seattle about 10 hours late.

At this point we've been on the phone to Alaska Airlines changing our LA flights.  Then we got a notice that the LA flight was cancelled.  We were still in Anchorage.  

There was an announcement that another flight was taking off to Seattle at Gate 6.  We walked to Gate 6 and asked if we could get on it.  It was almost noon.  We could.  And we got two seats together.  But we had to get on right away and couldn't redo the LA flight from Seattle. 

Alaska had also sent us four $12 vouchers for today at ANC or SEATAC.  

When we landed at 4:30pm I texted Alaska Airlines and they quickly had us rebooked on a 5:58pm flight to LA.  Just enough time to use our coupons to get some yakisoba and board the plane.  

In the end, we landed in LA an hour later than scheduled.  

LAX a couple of years ago banned taxis and Lyft and Uber from the terminals and put them in their own spot.  So you can't get out of the terminal and grab a cab.  There are shuttle busses or you can walk.  When we've waited for the shuttle it's been a long wait, so we walked about 25 minutes.  Then there was a long line waiting for cabs.  It's a poor solution to the jam of Uber and Lyfts that caused them to do this.

But we're here, at my mom's house and the kids and grandkids are due when their schools are out.  So I'm not really complaining.  Just reporting.  

It seems that Alaska is able to quickly change things by phone, but people waiting at the counters seemed to have more difficulties.  And when our flight was changed to 3pm, why couldn't they move us to the other flight that had some empty seats and was leaving 3 hours earlier?  If we hadn't walked over, the plane would have left with at least two empty seats if not more.  

So I'm impressed with being able to book online or by phone so quickly.  And I realize that things happen and planes need repairs that delay them.  Though at one point I had to delete my app and then download it again because it stopped showing the changes we'd made.  

Our original flight didn't leave until 3:15pm.  We got to LA an hour after the original flight landed in Seattle.  

I'd also add that that if you are MVP, you get a phone number that seems to be answered much faster than the regular phone number.  We haven't flown that much in the last few years - not enough to get MVP - but Alaska has extended so called elite flyers status during COVID.  This year they let you get to that magic 20K miles using miles gained through use of your Alaska Airlines VISA card.  

And the people who answer the phone are soo polite and competent.