Friday was a travel day. I walked to the Civic Center BART station at 10 in the morning. Then BART to the San Francisco Airport and find out that my flight was delayed, then delayed again, then again. We finally left for Seattle at 6:15pm. Of course this meant that I missed my connection to Fairbanks. The delay was not related to weather but the airline not having a pilot available. While in line for rebooking, I called the airline and rescheduled so all I needed to ask about was my checked bag.
Once in Seattle, everyone on the flight received a little gift with some gourmet food items and a 2200 mAh USB cell phone charger as they got off of the flight. Pretty cool gift. Especially since I put all of my chargers in my checked bag. The battery in my iPhone is 1570mAh so this is more than a full charge. I stopped at customer service before heading to baggage claim to make sure that my return flight reservation was in place. It was and they gave me a hotel voucher since the delay was caused by the airline. Pretty phenomenal customer service. Kudos to Alaska Airlines!
The hotel was the Hilton Doubletree. Far better than what I would have picked on my own off of hotels.com. My mom is flying up to Fairbanks tomorrow so I rescheduled to be on the same flight from Seattle to Fairbanks. Note that it's a corner room! Dinner in the lounge was delicious. More so since I hadn't had any food yesterday besides the complimentary pretzel snack on the plane. I thought that the San Francisco airport would have a decent selection of restaurants but was wrong. Besides a smattering of fast food, there was only pizza.
I was thinking about taking the light rail into Seattle but it has been raining pretty steadily all night and doesn't look too much better today. My flight out of Seattle isn't until 11pm so I have some free time today. This is a look from the balcony of the hotel room.
Posted with Blogsy
Delayed flights - how annoying! At least Alaska Airlines took good care of you. Yeah, so much about decent food choices at SFO. ...
ReplyDeleteDelayed flights happen though not for quite a while. Especially non-weather related delays. I didn't expect so few choices in SFO.
DeleteNo kidding! Points for AK Air! Nice gifts. Sounds like you were well taken care of.
ReplyDeleteNo real complaints. Flights were crowded, airports were jammed and AK Air still kept it a pleasant enough experience. It's always hard to travel at this time of year.
DeleteMy flight back to MSP was heavily delayed due to weather and as a result, Alaska Air took me to Portland. Everything about that interruption was classy and smooth.
ReplyDeleteWelcome home!
I have been pretty happy with Alaska Airlines over the years and have over 600,000 miles with them.
DeleteIt sounds like they treated you pretty well after delaying the flight so long. Doubletree hotels are pretty nice, did you get a warm cookie on check-in?
ReplyDeleteWe do not like fast food, but in a pinch at the airport have been known to eat a veggie sub (no may/no cheese) from Subway. Not healthy because of the bread, but it trumps the other options.
Glad you are headed home, and with your mom too.
Actually, I got 2 warm cookies at check in. Real simple too. I gave them something tha looked like an airline ticket and they gave me a room key. Subway veggie subs are all right and I started to get them on flat bread. Not as heavy as their regular bread.
DeleteGood job on the part of AK airlines in trying to make the delay not as bad as it could be! Kudos indeed.
ReplyDeleteYep, lots of people were complaining but much of it was out of anyone's control. Even the pilot thing that caused the delays was due to crowded flights and bad weather in other parts of the country.
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