SFO777

This trip is so unlike city girl Mrs. SFO777. Some 8 months ago after a few drinks, Mrs. SFO777 decided that she wanted to go fishing in Alaska. Say what?? Forget that in our 22 years together, we have never gone fishing and she has never even hinted about wanting to go fishing. Add in the fact that her idea of camping is a hotel without room service and this is a most bizarre and uncharacteristic trip.

The best part of our planning was when she read the fine print earlier in the week and found out that we may need to be ready at 3am to meet our fishing guide. OMG. This is the woman that says no flights before noon. She couldn't understand why we have to go so early and not 10am, until SFO777Jr explained that the fishies go to sleep when the temps warm up. OK, this is going to be hoot.

When we were living in Denver, we had booked a United nonstop to Anchorage. Now in Orange County, we are off to John Wayne for our Alaska flights to Seattle and Anchorage. Our new OC driver picked us up at 1:45p and we were at the SNA Alaska counter at 2:10p.





With only a couple of folks in front of us in the PreCheck line, we were thru in no time and at the Admirals Club a few minutes later. Small but pleasant lounge with a very friendly staff.













At around T-45 we headed down to Gate 6 where boarding was just about to start.

Santa Ana-Seattle
Alaska 509
737-800
3:55p-6:15p
July 12, 2016
Lunch

One step on this plane and I remember why I don't fly Alaska a lot. Yikes, what a crappy old plane this sucker is. Tight pitch at only 36" which is the worst mainline premium cabin in NA.



And the bulkhead, the only row with a pair of seats when I booked. Wow, can they get the seats any closer to the wall?





No PDB but there was a bottle of water at each seat.



Pretty carpet on the bulkhead but that's about it on this plane.



Hedge Trimmer??



Pleasant cabin crew provided excellent service given what they are given to work with. Good luck with that VX acquisition because those flyers will run for the hills when they get a load of this cabin and this food. Today's meal was a choice of tortellini with eggplant, or not. Eggplant? Really? A couple of bites and that was it for me.



Yuck and I thought AA meals were bad.



And the only edible part of the meal, the Dancing Deer Lemon Square.



Passing by Lake Tahoe, another place we called home.





Gogo worked, off and on. Please, take my back to United.



At least there was power.



Yep, that's pretty tight.







Approaching Seattle.



And to the N terminal. In an amazing stroke of luck, we arrived at N14 and our flight to Anchorage departed from adjacent N16. A quick visit to the small-ish N Terminal Board Room.









Nice plane and cart spotting.



Rather weak food offerings.



Not wanting to chance another AS meal, we headed for what appeared to be the lesser of the food evils, the Seahawks 12 Club.





Pepperoni flatbread was pretty weak.



As were their signature LOL pulled pork sliders.



Seattle-Anchorage
Alaska 99
737-800
7:50p-10:15p
July 12, 2016
Dinner

Same old plane, same old cabin. Except this one featured the filthiest windows I have ever seen on any plane. Yeah, let's clean the inside windows with a dirty rag.









In contrast to the great SNA-SEA crew, this crew was pretty useless. Little interaction, no description of the meal.



And then there was the meal service. No description at all from our FA with an attitude. I'm guessing chicken. Strange presentation though.



I rearrange the tray. Unfortunately, it didn't help. Other than round 2 of the Dancing Deer Sweet Lemon Square, this meal was disgusting. Fortunately we had eaten in Seattle and I took the meal for the photo op.



Nice pics on descent to Anchorage with a clean window after I used my hand towel to do what AS maintenance should have done.









10:30pm in Anchorage looks like 7:30p in the lower 48.







We picked up our Avis SUV and headed for the airport Courtyard, a short 5 minute drive.



















Pretty basic room with mandatory for Alaska black out curtains. Oops, sorry for the mess.









For an HD version of this report, please visit SFO777.com.

denCSA

Great start to the trip! Hope you guys enjoy(ed) it. Next time tell the Mrs. if she wants to do fishing in Alaska, it HAS to be by helicopter! I've done it twice and it's such an incredible experience, so easy on beginners

roadwarrier

A friend of mine, and her two sisters have just done a tour of parts of Alaska. The photos were amazing, they had a great time.
Looking forward to the rest, thank you.

Eastbay1K

AS F seat pitch is just horrid. This is being remedied within the year as pitch and recline is going up (at the expense of a row in the 738s). Meal services on "shorter" flights is also, shall we say, "not the best." And this includes ANC/SEA. Yet the crews, on an average day, are amongst the best in the domestic skies.

I trust that AS is serious about becoming a national player and won't squander at least the first opportunity to please VX flyers. Recall that they didn't ever have much historical competition on most of their nonstop route structure. Now with SNA as your home base, you may be flying the Eskimo more. I'm trying to give you some optimism.

As for the fish, I can't wait to see the fish, which will no doubt, fly more comfortably home than you apparently will.

AKCuisine

Our weather has been glorious this week, so I'm glad you and Mrs. SFO777 are getting a chance to enjoy it SFO777. One couldn't ask for better flightseeing conditions!

It will be interesting to follow along and see where in my state your little adventure takes you.

Bretteee

What was the temperature like in Alaska.

Always wanted to go.

Food on Alaska F looks awful. They had such a good reputation.

AKDan

Looking forward to reading the rest of your report. Welcome to Alaska! If you are catching a fishing guide hopefully it's down here on the Kenai ... The fish are running pretty hot at the moment.

SFO777

For our first morning in Alaska, I had booked a private sightseeing flight to Denali and Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. After doing a little research, I decided on Sound Aviation, a two person one plane family operation owned by Bill and Beth Marsan. Bill has been flying in Alaska for nearly 20 years, the last 8 with their own plane and company. They operate air taxi service to remote communities and take visitors on tours of the state. We arrived at downtown Merritt Field at 8am on a gorgeous morning for flying. Beth is a character, using a scooter to guide us from the gate to their tarmac area. Then she doubles are the ground crew cleaning windows before the flight.







Ready to go.



Lots of cool boneyard relics around the field.



Then taxiing across the field...



... to fuel up.





After takeoff, we headed north for the 45 minute flight to Mt. McKinley, climbing to 12,000 feet.













Simply spectacular scenery.



















































































































After some 30 minutes of amazing awe-inspring scenery flying around and by mountains, peaks and glaciers, we headed back to Anchorage.









Descending to 100-300' on our return.





















Wow, what a great experience. Spectacular scenery and a great pilot. I highly recommend Bill, Beth and Sound Aviation.

SFO777

Thank you denCSA. Interesting. Hadn't thought of heli-fishing although I'm not sure there will be another time.

Thanks roadwarrior.

Thanks very much Eastbay1K. I can't imagine any scenario where AS could realistically compete nationally. Good luck keeping VX flyers. It just seems destined to be a repeat of US and AA... installing a crappy US product systemwide and destroying a great domestic brand.

Thank you AKCuisine. Indeed, we couldn't have asked for more perfect weather. And Everywhere you turn, the scenery is simply spectacular.

Temps were perfect, highs in the upper 60s to low 70s. Morning temps in the low to mid 50s.

Thanks so much AKDan. Indeed, we were on the Kenai. We went halibut fishing on Cook Inlet and then salmon fishing on the Kenai... caught our limit every day. It was so easy that Mrs. SFO says it's not really fishing but just catching, especially for salmon. Lots of great pics.

DanielW

Awesome photo's from Alaska, SFO777, such amazing scenery.

Chugach

@SFO777, believe it or not AS has upgraded their F food offerings. I am guessing you didn't get to experience the Cubano that was on almost every single AS flight I took in F over 90 minutes for at least a year. DL setting up shop in Seattle has done much to spur advances in the AS product recently.

I don't think AS will squander this opportunity with VX, but it's going to mean big changes for an airline that has historically never had to compete much between a near monopoly within Alaska and little nonstop competition from SEA or PDX.

TM78

Photos from your sightseeing trip are amazing. It will be again great TR as allways from you.

benjahman

Great TR SFO777 My father worked for ATT/Alascom for ~26 years and this brings back great memories of visiting him during salmon runs on the Kenai and halibut fishing off of Seward. Thank you for sharing!

warreng24

Wonderful report SFO777. We did our 1st trip to Denali about this time last year. Although we saw it from the Park Road, it is even more spectacular from the air. Beautiful pictures.

offerendum

What a wired combination. Hey, we have some sausages and some kinf of ragtag tortellini - let´s do sausages with tortellini! Doesn´t match together, but hey, we can get rid off of both