Originally Posted by gary_nj

I flew one of these last week and wanted to report on a few items, mostly related to seat selection. By way of background, I am an Alaska MVP Gold 75K member, mostly from flying on partner airlines. Before flying this, I didn't have experience with Virgin America, and very little experience on Alaska metal. My routing was PDX-SFO-FLL-LAX-IAD-SFO-PDX.

My departure from PDX was Tuesday, 22 Aug, the day after the solar eclipse that was visible in Oregon. ExpertFlyer was showing zeroes across the board for all VX flights from PDX to SFO for the day, so I was expecting a bump-a-thon. I was told at check-in, though, that the flight was not oversold. (As we were boarding, a Delta flight to LAX near our gate was oversold and the agent was offering a $1000 travel credit for volunteers.)

Although I had pre-selected seats (before Mileage Plan members had access to preferred seating), I wound up sitting in none of the seats that I had pre-selected. On the first leg, PDX-SFO, the plane was just about full, but ExpertFlyer's seat maps showed a last-minute couple of no-shows in 8A/B so I grabbed 8A and had an empty middle.

If there is one theme from my experience, it is that VX's gate agents don't have consistent knowledge about seating benefits for AS elite members. I am not sure when AS elites became eligible for Main Cabin Select upgrades, but gate agents were kind of hit or miss with that. I would certainly recommend trying to do that at T-24 through the call center, despite some of the horror stories of the call center.

For example, when departing SFO for the first time, I flashed my Gold 75K card and asked about exit row seating... the gate agent told me that, "It requires an upgrade fee." So I wandered off, and later asked someone else who put me in 10C immediately. Similarly in Fort Lauderdale, when I asked about seat benefits for me as an elite member, I was told that there really weren't any, but they would put me in row 13. (Row 13 seems to be blocked for gate assignment, and on my flights was kept pretty empty.)

From LAX to IAD overnight, the flight was pretty full but Main Cabin Select was light. I asked at the gate, and the agent said that I would be put on an upgrade list and cleared 30 minutes before departure. However, as soon as I walked away from the gate, I looked at the app and my seat was changed to MCS. (I am not typically a fan of bulkhead seats, but row 3 on the VX planes is nice!) Again at IAD, I asked about MCS and was denied but wound up in row 13 by myself. For the final SFO-PDX leg, I was upgraded to MCS although I needed to ask about it twice.

In my experience, the gate agents at SFO and LAX seemed to be more aware of some of the recent changes than the agents at the outstations, which I guess makes sense. In the end, I wound up in MCS in three of six segments, and wound up in row 13 in another two. I never had anyone sit in a middle seat next to me. So the whole run was really not so painful.

During my time in IAD, I took advantage of the Turkish Airlines lounge and shower (with Priority Pass). The shower was nice, but a bit disappointing... the lounge has exactly one shower and it was not cleaned between customers. When I arrived at the lounge, the greeter advised me to ask the person who was serving food for access to the shower... she told me to just check to see if the door was locked. There was no signup list or anything. When I noticed that the door was open, I mentioned it to the food server, who handed me a towel. The towel reminded me of a towel from a budget motel in the US. So the shower was great after several long flights, but it was not quite as plush as I might have expected.

It's been a week and my miles have not yet posted. One thing that I noticed was that when my boarding pass was re-printed at the gate, my AS number did not appear. I asked one gate agent about it, and was assured that it was in the system. So we'll see.

Bottom line - having the flights not be totally full, and having access to MCS or row 13 at the gate (and ExpertFlyer to check seat maps) made this a very bearable 36 hours.