Originally Posted by
HanoiIG
I learned how to navigate the AS website. Since my closest airports where they fly are BWI and PHL, followed by EWR, DCA and IAD, my options are limited. I don't want to fly to New Orleans via the West Coast, or to Vegas via LA(though that isn't the worst. My two choices were Maui and Calgary, but my timing made Calgary better. My wife's Companion Fare doesn't expire until next March, so I can try for the following winter if I chose Maui.
I got IAD-SEA with two nights layover, then on to Calgary. I think I'll stay four nights in Banff then can take a 13:30 flight back to Dulles, via SEA and arrive by 23:30. All in all, not the worst plan. Paying around $1100, including my wife's 99+ taxes/fees.
It's a nice perk but the options are limited. Can fly to LAX or SFO non-stop, but the fares are so low, it's not worth burning a credit.
It's a west coast airline. They don't even fly between Chicago and the northeast, you have to fly back to the west coast to fly from Chicago to the northeast on Alaska (and I think the Chicago routings are all ones they picked up from VX and didn't have before that?). I think the route map makes it clear enough that AS isn't great if your home base isn't on the west coast:
I really wish JetBlue would have won the bidding insofar as the combined network would have been much more additive than duplicative than what we got:
And for reference here's the VX route map from right before they got fully folded into AS:
For me the big draw is that they have nonstops between both LAX-EWR and LAX-JFK. Not a ton of daily flights from either but still super convenient for what my travel plans back to NY/NJ tend to look like.