October 27th, 2022
Alaska Airlines – Atlanta to Seattle – 755p – 1020p – 737-MAX9 – First Class

My flight from Atlanta to Seattle wasn’t departing until 8:00pm, so it was nice to be able to sleep in and enjoy a leisurely three hour drive back to Atlanta. By virtue of my membership in the Alaska Lounge, I have access to OneWorld partner American’s Admirals Clubs when flying Alaska or American and I was pleasantly surprised upon discovering that American had a lounge at Hartsfield. Once upon a time I used to have access to all of Delta’s Sky Clubs back when Alaska and Delta were partners, but that of course ceased to be the case after Delta opened a secondary hub at Alaska’s primary hub at Seattle.

My other nice surprise was discovering that I’d benefitted from a last minute upgrade. I’d checked the flight status this morning and saw that there was one First Class seat available and I was number one on the upgrade list. While that sounds good, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ended up in Economy under similar circumstances, at the top of the upgrade list. Tonight I even got an aisle seat at 4D.

Since I wasn’t upgraded more than 24 hours out, I had no ability to see or pre-order the menu choices off of Alaska’s website. I can tell you I heard the flight attendant offering chicken or risotto and if I’d had the choice I would’ve gone with the chicken. Seated back in row four negated that possibility however, and so I ended up with the risotto.

Well let me tell you, that risotto was a most pleasant surprise. As served in the little bowls, I don’t think the risotto presents particularly well. Mainly it doesn’t look very filling. But, what it lacks in appearance it more than makes up for in flavor. It was delicious!



Alaska Airlines’ delicious risotto


October 28th, 2022
Alaska Airlines – Seattle to Fairbanks – 825a – 1120a – 737-MAX9 – First Class

As an MVP Gold 100K in Alaska’s Mileage Plan, I’m eligible to be upgraded up to five days out. It doesn’t happen very often and it didn’t happen this flight either, but it came close. This flight upgraded four days out, and as such I now had access to the full breakfast menu.

Fruit & Cheese Plate
It’s an all-star cast for our Fruit & Cheese plate. Beecher’s® Flagship cheese, Tillamook® sharp cheddar and brie, Partners® crackers, and finished with a Seattle Chocolate truffle.

Cinnamon Apple Dutch Baby Pancakes
Baked Dutch-baby pancakes, filled with honey & cinnamon roasted apples with a caramel syrup. Served with Applewood-smoked bacon.

Caramelized Onion and Potato Frittata
Spanish style potato and onion frittata, accompanied with marinated tomatoes, a red pepper coulis, and vegan apple maple sausages. Topped with grated queso fresco cheese.


What’s a “baby” pancake? Or is it “Dutch-baby” and if so, how does that translate to pancakes? Either way, it didn’t sound particularly filling so I ordered the Caramelized Onion and Potato Frittata.



Caramelized Onion and Potato Frittata


Seated in 2D (my favorite seat these days) I started off with coffee and a screw driver. When our meals were presented, I got my frittata while seatmate was presented with the baked Dutch-baby pancakes. They looked GOOD! Indeed, they looked better than my frittata. Well then, I know what I’ll order if presented with this menu again. In the meantime, my frittata was pretty good as well. I’m assuming the term “vegan” in reference to the apple maple sausages meant they had to have been made with some sort of meat alternative, but they were also pretty good in both texture and flavor.

Flight time to Fairbanks was fairly short by northbound standards – a mere three hours and fifteen minutes. Our descent took us over the Tanana flats before commencing a big U-turn and making our final down along the Tanana River. Last year at this time there was at least a foot of snow on the ground. Today it looked to be just a dusting.

As I mentioned earlier in this report, it’s always nice to come home to Alaska! Indeed, this would seem a good place to end this report except for the fact that a couple of things happened that resulted in continuing travels quite worthy of reporting upon. To wit –


THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

I truly enjoy the benefits associated with my 100K status. As a recent example, I probably wouldn’t have gotten that upgrade out of Atlanta the other night if I were a mere 75K. While it’s easy to view your mileage earnings and status on your airline’s website, I also maintain my own Excel table that breaks it all down for me and allows me to easily see the status and total miles to be earned through future travel possibilities.

Unlike some, I don’t wait around until December to address any deficiencies in my frequent flyer status mileage for the year. As such, knowing back in August that I was still fairly short of my goal to retain 100K status, I started looking into booking additional flights back then. The lifelong airline geek in me wanted to fly Alaska’s hitherto unflown routes between Seattle and the three Ohio cities of Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. It’s worth noting here that I’ve flown pretty much every long distance route Alaska flies in the continental U.S. with the exception of the three Ohio cities, Oklahoma City and Wichita. Collect them all, I say!

Anyway, I found and booked what I considered to be a decent fare on a roundtrip from Fairbanks to Cleveland. Next, rather than book roundtrips to both Cincinnati and Columbus, I booked a one way to Cincinnati with a return from Columbus. It’s not all that far from Cincinnati to Columbus, and Google Maps indicated that I could get from CVG to CMH using local city transit buses in each city combined with an intercity bus from downtown Cincinnati to downtown Columbus.

Following that trip, I booked a one way flight from Fairbanks to Chicago in concert with a good price I got on a roomette aboard Amtrak’s California Zephyr from Chicago to Emeryville. Amtrak’s First Class sleeper fares got really expensive back in April – almost double what they had been – but I like train travel and so I made of point of checking in every once in a while and plugging in a few sample dates between city pairs. This finally paid off with a date in November, so I grabbed it and then booked tickets home from nearby SFO. Again, all of this was booked back in August.

The result of all this is that I was very close but not quite at 100K. So, I booked a good fare from Fairbanks to Las Vegas with plans to rent a car and do my usual desert road trip – this time a northern route through southwestern Utah and northern Arizona. I could do a road trip through this region every month and still love every minute of it! This trip, in combination with a trip I had to do anyway down to Colorado in December would put me over the 100K threshold.

Alright then, well another habit of mine is to check out award possibilities on Alaska’s website every now and then – even if I’m not planning on going anywhere. I mean, I’m sitting on 1.2 million miles in my account and I don’t have to report back to work until next May, so you never know. Japan Airlines First Class awards show up every now and then, but what I’d really like to see and book is a 210000 mile First Class award on Singapore Airlines. An Alaska res agent told me she’d seen one once, but I never have. And Qantas – they hardly ever release any First Class seats but word is they’re flying – or will soon start flying - the A380s back to the U.S. I actually booked roundtrip First Class on Qantas from Dallas to Sydney back in 2017, so you never know…. Bottom line – you’ll never know if you don’t get out there and put in the time to investigate now and then. It’s not always easy. Indeed, most of the time my searches yield nothing. I liken it to panning for gold. More often than not, you’ve got to sift through a heck of a lot of sand and gravel before you finally find that elusive First Class nugget. But again, unless you’re willing to put in the time to do the research, you won’t yield any rewards – or awards as the case may be.

Okay then, so here I was trolling for awards through the Alaska Airlines website, much like a fisherman cruising along a lake through favorite fishing spots. This means plugging in date after date on possible routes and seeing what if anything is available. There may have been some beer involved. Alaska’s also got a flexible date calendar which can be quite helpful in this endeavor.

I got a strike while looking at New York to Singapore in late November. Hmm… EWR-SIN on Singapore’s nonstop A350-900ULR in Business Class aboard what is essentially the longest flight in the world. (Word is JFK-SIN is about 10 miles farther, but when you’re talking 9500+ miles, what’s another 10 miles?) Plus, given the variations due to winds and weather enroute, who knows – maybe my flight out of Newark on that day will be the longest. Anyway, I was immediately drawn to this if only to add the world’s longest or second longest flight to my collection. The award required redemption of 100000 miles, and since that amount covers travel not just to Singapore but the Southeast Asia region, I started looking at possibilities beyond Singapore to Thailand and Indonesia.

To make a long story just a bit shorter, I ended up booking that flight from Newark through SIN to Denpasar on Bali – Business Class all the way. For the return trip, I was surprised to find a First Class seat on Japan Airlines between Tokyo Haneda (HND) and Chicago on December 9th. I’ve never flown through Haneda before, so that was an immediate selling point. Book it, Danno!

One of the benefits of Gold status and above with Alaska is that I can cancel anytime without penalty. Over the next few days I was hoping that a connecting flight to Tokyo on JAL might open up out of Jakarta or Singapore or even Bangkok, but alas, nothing ever did – at least not on the dates I needed. What I did find however was an Economy Class seat on the redeye out of Ho Chi Minh City that would connect nicely with the HND-ORD flight. I then booked a 25000 mile Business Class award on Singapore from Denpasar to Ho Chi Minh City.

Finally, since the flight from Newark to Singapore would be departing on November 25th and my train trip from Chicago to Emeryville, CA ended on the 17th, rather than return home I rebooked the Las Vegas road trip via a Southwest flight from Oakland to Las Vegas. I mean, I’m already in the region anyway, right? And, then flying from Las Vegas to Newark, the timing was perfect because not only was the 24th a well suited date to fly to Newark, it was also Thanksgiving Day which meant air fares for travel on that day were a bit lower and the airports just a bit less crowded. I found a flight through San Francisco departing Vegas on the evening of the 23rd, overnight at SFO, then fly into Newark the next morning. I’d miss all the Thanksgiving Day turkey and football, but as I mentioned earlier, the LAS-SFO-EWR ticket in conjunction with my ORD-FAI and FAI-DEN-FAI tickets in December would put me over Alaska’s 100K threshold.


Bali Here I Come!!!


Alright then, well it’s still early November and I still have yet to fly those flights out to Ohio and back and then on to Chicago for my ride on the California Zephyr. Keep in mind I also have to maintain tier status on Amtrak as well. Now twenty years ago I was still young and enthusiastic enough that I would have found writing a trip report about a bunch of domestic First Class flights worthy of my time, but at this point it’s really come down to a case of “been there, done that”. Additionally, the meals – at least on Alaska – were much better and more nicely presented twenty years ago. So, instead I will leave you with a few pictures of some of the meals I enjoyed during my forays out to the Buckeye State and the Land of Lincoln. I got upgraded on most but not all of the flights involved and racked up a good bunch of miles along the way. Here are those pictures. Bon Apetite!



AS SEA-CLE Corn and Pimento Breakfast Crepes
Cage free scrambled egg stuffed crepes with Monterey jack cheese. Topped with a corn pimento salsa, and grated queso fresco cheese


AS CLE-SEA Apricot & Prosciutto Chicken
Roasted apricot chutney stuffed chicken breast wrapped in prosciutto. accompanied with red and wild rice pilaf, roasted delicata squash, and a tarragon velouté sauce


AS SEA-CVG Cinnamon Apple Dutch Baby Pancakes
Baked Dutch-baby pancakes, filled with honey & cinnamon roasted apples with a caramel syrup. Served with Applewood-smoked bacon.


AS SEA-ANC Breakfast Bowl


AS SEA-ORD Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!