Alaska Airlines
First Class (A)
YVR-SEA (Vancouver International Airport – SeaTac Airport)
AS 702
June 2, 2017
Booked: Boeing 737-900
Flown: Boeing 737-900
Departure: 11:58 AM
Arrival: 12:54 PM
We had a terrible 24 hours before this trip started. We were both traveling on separate tickets for work related reasons on Air Canada back to Vancouver; myself from St John’s, Newfoundland and MrsWT73 from Ottawa. Both of our flights had mechanical issues and my flight leaving The Rock was cancelled outright. I ended up flying standby out of St John’s and had to leave a co-worker behind as he had checked bag and I had carry on only.
As I work shopped contingency plans that included purchasing a full fare revenue ticket for one of us to Los Angeles get to our midnight Fiji Airways departure flight, I made it back to Vancouver after 20 hrs of travel at about 2:30 AM, only to turn around for this flight at 11:58 AM. Ugh! I wouldn't have typically booked it so close together but the lack of reward availability was the deciding factor. We made it however. . .
We took an Aerocar to the airport; a Ford Expedition today. We arrived to a quiet departure zone with Alaska Airlines occupying the space immediately under the Fairmont hotel Vancouver International Airport.
The pleasant Alaska Airlines staff checked us in at the First Class MVP counter. Bags were checked to LAX as we had a 7 hour layover and MrsWT73 was concerned about luggage content theft since we had some bag luck on our last long layover through there.
MrsWT73 for the fortunate “SSSS” and free massage that went along with it. Despite our Nexus / Global Entry, she was not permitted to use the lane and was re-directed towards the regular screening. She was able to by pass the queue thankfully, which was at least 150 people.
There is no lounge available to Alaska Airlines First Class passengers so we hung out at the busy gate area. There was no plane on arrival; usually a bad sign for an morning flight.
The flight posted at major delay of 1hr 12 minutes and we immediately mis-connected. This was blamed on SEA Air Traffic Control. The gate agents in Vancouver pro-actively started re-connecting passengers but unfortunately did not get to us before we boarded.
Finally the plane arrived.
We got on board and settled into the usual blue Alaska First Class recliner seat. There was a small bottle of Dasani water that was waiting for us.
There was available in seat power from the center console.
On board we were offered an open bar pre-departure beverage with the advice and information that there would be no offerings in service due to the short length of the flight (27 minutes). Look’s like it’s a Gin and Tonic for me to start the holidays in a plastic cup. We had pleasant crews otherwise.
We departed promptly. As we were pushing back, I checked the Alaska App on my phone and we were proactively re-booked on to AS 410 departing Seattle at 3:50 PM.
A nice climb out of naturally green Vancouver…
With a very short flight down to Seattle. We had some nice views of downtown on our pass over the city.
We were on the ground quickly and taxiing to the gate. Not a bad flight overall but there isn't much advantage to first class seating on this short leg since there is no food and beverage service aside from a pre-departure drink made more comfortable by a wider seat.