March 23, 2005
Miami to Seattle
Alaska 17 First Class * Breakfast
737-900 N320AS Seat 1A
800a-1100a Flight Time: 5:52

If you didn’t know where to look, it would be very easy to miss Alaska Airlines’ tiny little check-in counter at Miami International. It’s located at the entrance to the E Concourse but is obscured by a big bank of escalators that access the train out to the E gates. Alaska operates just one flight per day into Miami, so I suppose they should be happy they have a counter at all as opposed to, say, a podium.

I checked my pack all the way through to Fairbanks and then headed over to the Club America, located landside at the entrance to the F Concourse. I had a long day ahead of me – three more flights covering 4,430 miles – and I required massive infusions of coffee, orange juice and a couple of oatmeal raisin cookies. The receptionist remembered me from my November trips down here. It must be the beard. I’m probably the only guy in South Florida with a beard longer than 1/8th of an inch. The Don Johnson look from Miami Vice is still in, I reckon. Up in Alaska, we’re more partial to Grizzly Adams.

Alaska Airlines has a posted policy requiring passengers to be at the gate, ready to board thirty minutes before scheduled departure. For the most part, I ignore this policy. Furthermore, Alaska’s policy states that ten minutes before departure, all passengers should be onboard the aircraft so that doors can be shut and the aircraft finalized for an on time departure. Alaska truly endeavors to accomplish this goal and those who ignore the ten-minute rule do so at their peril.

I arrived at the gate about 20 minutes before departure. Large masses of humanity heading in the opposite direction brushed by me as I neared the gate. Where are all these people coming from? Ah ha! The inbound from Seattle had just arrived. The marquee board at the check-in counter reflected an on-time arrival for the inbound flight. Needless to say, I wasn’t too happy about this because had I known of the delay, I would have been back in the Club America downing quarts of coffee and orange juice. The sign at the podium showed an 8:10am departure. No way we’re turning a 737-900 around in just 30 minutes, I thought. Think again, 2A. By the time 8:10am rolled around, we were onboard the aircraft and waiting for the final paperwork. Well done, Alaska!

Soon we were pushing back from the gate and taxiing past a big, dirty A340 from Aerolineas Argentinas. That plane was in serious need of a good cleaning. The captain welcomed us aboard, indicated a 20-30 mph headwind along our route of flight and announced our estimated flying time as five hours and forty-eight minutes. He ended with that old standby line “If there’s anything we can do to make your flight more enjoyable, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

Aside from the advertised service, which is generally always delivered, I’m at a loss to figure out what else the crew might be willing to do. I mean, I heard that a Boeing test pilot once successfully took a Boeing 727 through a barrel roll. Can we please try that at some point during the flight with this 737? I’d really enjoy that!!



A nice level flight at 38,000' enroute to Seattle

We had a great group of Flight Attendants for this flight. They all must have gotten a good rest last night because they were all bright eyed and bushy tailed as opposed to the beady eyed and beaver tailed variety one occasionally encounters on these early morning departures. Perhaps because of the effort in getting this plane loaded, closed up and off the blocks by 8:15, breakfast orders were not taken until we’d leveled out at 35,000 feet. We were offered a choice between a cheese omelette or a quiche. Normally, I’d be interested in a quiche but the thing Alaska calls a quiche is one of those pre-fab jobs with way too much crust and not enough eggs. I went with the omelette, along with – you guessed it – coffee and orange juice.

On flights over three hours, Alaska begins its breakfast service with the presentation of a fruit plate. Today’s offering included slices of pineapple, cantaloupe and honeydew melon. The only bread offered was a warm apple filled Danish pastry placed on a doily in the corner of the tray. The fruit plate was tasty enough but on a flight of almost six hours, Alaska really should offer a proper bread service. Danishes, sure, but how about some croissants or bagels?




Fruit Plate



Cheese Omelette Alaska Style


The best omelet I’ve ever eaten aboard an airplane was two years ago on an Alaska flight between Seattle and Miami. It was billed as an Asiago Cheese Omelette and was topped with sliced mushrooms and green onions. Accompanying it were roasted potatoes, sautéed spinach and turkey sausage. The omelet was actually fluffy, and the spinach, roasted potatoes and turkey sausage were much healthier accompaniments than the fried fatty items one often receives with breakfast.

Today’s simple cheese omelette was served with greasy potatoes and greasier sausage. It was about as unhealthy a combination as you can get, especially with only an apple Danish for the bread course. Frankly, it was a disgrace not only to the kitchen that prepared it but also to Alaska Airlines for serving it. Once upon a time, Alaska’s top executives including the CEO used to sit down to one of their weekly meetings and be served airline food. I doubt that’s the case anymore.

Unfortunately, inflight food is generally a no win proposition for the airlines. No matter how well prepared and presented the food is, amongst the one hundred and fifty or so passengers on board, somebody’s always going to find something to complain about. Even so, I don’t think it would be too much to ask of Alaska or any airline to prepare its First Class dishes in a healthier style. That means less fried items and more broiled or baked items. I don’t think it costs any more to broil or bake as opposed to frying, though it may take a bit longer.

Consider breakfast in America. As a whole, most Americans like eggs for breakfast. For a First Class hot entree on a five hour flight, I should imagine it would be quite possible to scramble up some eggs with veggies (with or without the cheese, it’d still be good) or prepare a nice omelette like Alaska used to serve. As accompaniments, they could offer roasted rather than fried potatoes and maybe a broiled tomato or asparagus or spinach if meat is deemed too expensive. Offering a sweet, fatty Danish pastry as the only bread item is just plain senseless. How much more would it cost, if any more, to offer a plain bagel? Remember, we’re talking transcontinental First Class service here.

Alaska’s First Class food service was once of such a high standard on short to medium range flights that the cutbacks enacted in the past year have not set well with its frequent flyers. The food related postings over at FlyerTalk’s Alaska Forum attract a lot of comment, most of it negative.

Perhaps the most appreciated perk in any Frequent Flyer program is the ability to upgrade to First Class. However, when passengers are asked what aspect if the inflight experience is most important to them, in survey after survey they have pointed to greater personal space and a quiet and relaxed environment as being the most highly rated aspects of a nice flight. Complimentary cocktails and elite lanes at security check points rate much higher than a better quality omelette or healthier breads.

A big part of Alaska’s rationale for cutting services in the forward cabin is that First Class simply doesn’t produce the revenue to support a nicer meal service. Okay, so then follow the early example provided by fellow Alaskan carrier Wien Air Alaska back in the early 1980s. Drop this now ridiculous façade of a First Class service and call the forward cabin Business Class. Meals, if any, will be the same as Economy Class but drinks will be complimentary. What you’re really buying is space. Wien even took it a step further and would not allow children under twelve to travel in the Business Class cabin.

Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox now because our descent into Seattle has begun and soon all seat backs and tray tables will have to be returned to their full upright position and all electronic equipment must be yada, yada, yada …

We parked next to the Alaskaair.com jet and I headed down to the boardroom to catch up on my email.


Seattle to Anchorage
Alaska 177 First Class * Dinner
737-400 N779AS Seat 1F
330p-725p Flight Time: 3:23

On the way up to the gate, I ran into the postmaster of the tiny Post office in my hometown of tiny Ester, Alaska. He was headed with some of the boys to Mesquite, Nevada for a few days of sun and golf. I wished him well in his pursuit of par or within ten strokes of par. I also advised him to watch for the postcard I sent to him from Argentina. I’ve been going away on trips like this for years and Bill’s been more than patient in boxing and storing all my mail. In return, I try to send him postcards from every different country that I visit. I also try to put as many stamps as I reasonably can onto the postcard. This makes the card more colorful and also takes up space that I would otherwise have to write in. I send a lot of postcards and they all have at least three stamps on them if possible, plus an airmail sticker.

Awaiting me at gate C-11 was Alaska’s 737-400 N779AS. What, again?!! In all my years of travel with Alaska Airlines, N779AS is far and away the one aircraft I have flown more than any other plane. Today’s flight on this plane would be my fourteenth for 9,780 miles.

The Pacific Northwest has been in the throes of an extended drought over the past year. The lack of snow in the Cascades has been tough on local ski areas and will mean another summer of high fire danger in the region’s forests.

On a positive note, it’s also meant that Seattle has enjoyed what must surely be a record for the number of sunny days it’s experienced this winter. Today was a very sunny day indeed and I had my camera ready and loaded at my side in seat 1F, the scenic side for viewing all the mountains and glaciers on northbound flights.

Our First Class Flight Attendant was from Ireland, and although it had been some years since she’d actually lived there she still retained a good bit of that melodic Irish lilt. She stopped by now to take our drink orders and read us the dinner options:


Seattle to Anchorage

DINNER

To Begin
A bag of pretzels to accompany the beverage of your choice

Salad
Baby Spinach Salad with shaved red onions, chopped eggs and bacon
Presented with Balsamic Vinaigrette

ENTREES

Grilled Chicken Breast with Red Pepper Pesto Sauce
Served with red skinned mashed potatoes with green and yellow zucchini sautéed with thyme

Beef Tender Tip with Demi Glace Sauce
Accompanied by rosemary roasted potatoes with stir-fried broccoli, carrots and red onion

** ***** **

Dessert
Chocolate Silk Pie




Ah, if only Alaska served Guinness! Instead I settled on a MacTarnahan’s Scottish Ale, quite possibly the finest beer served aloft anywhere in America. To accompany my beer, I opted for the Grilled Chicken Breast with Red Pepper Pesto Sauce. Like N779AS, this is about the fourteenth time I’ve had this entrée. Where once one could fly Alaska and reasonably expect a different selection of entrées every week, now it seems the same two choices are served system wide for an entire month. Thankfully I rather like this chicken entrée but even so, I can’t help but think of that old Far Side cartoon that depicts a dog being served a bowl of food and the dog thinking “Oh Boy! Dog food again!!”




Grilled Chicken Breast with Red Pepper Pesto Sauce


Our flight this afternoon took us up along the East Coast of Vancouver Island – the very same side of the island I’d be traveling up in just two days time. The deep blue of the Georgia Strait coupled with the dark green of the spruce covered Gulf Islands looked wonderfully inviting in the late afternoon sun and I prayed that this good weather would hold for just a few more days.




Climbing towards cruising altitude over Vancouver Island


We continued up the coast of British Columbia, passing about forty miles west of Prince Rupert before entering Alaskan air space where we got good views of Ketchikan and Mount Edgecombe, the southernmost volcano in Alaska. All the while I was enjoying my chicken dinner whilst chatting with seatmate, a retired sales rep for Starwood Hotels. Unfortunately, she had misplaced her reading glasses and was unable to read any of the many magazines that she’d brought along for the trip north. Perhaps to compensate for the lack of stimuli normally provided by her magazines, she struck up a conversation with me early on in the flight. I obliged her as best I could with tales of great and not so great hostels that I have visited, as well as offering her a running commentary on the fantastic parade of nature’s beauty gliding by beneath us. For example, did you know that the last time Mt. Edgecombe down there acted up was on April Fool’s Day, about twenty years ago? Some pranksters hauled a load of old tires up there, doused them in gasoline and lit them afire. The resulting smoke caused quite a stir in nearby Sitka but when the authorities helicoptered up there to see if the volcano was reawakening, all they found was a bunch of smoldering tires arranged to spell “Happy April Fools Day!” Before long, seatmate was sound asleep and I returned to my reading.




Mt. Edgecombe - The Southernmost Volcano in Alaska


Actually, it occurred to me as we were flying past Mt. Edgecombe that just two days ago I was flying past all the Chilean volcanoes between Puerto Montt and Concepcion. Today I’ve seen six of the Cascade volcanoes as well as the southernmost of the Alaskan volcanoes. There are something like 22 volcanoes within 100 miles of Anchorage and if it remains clear, you can see quite a few of them during the approach for landing. That’s a lot of volcanoes to see in just three days.




Descent into Anchorage



Approaching Anchorage


Flights like this are why they put windows on airplanes.

In Anchorage I transferred to a smaller 737-700 for the short forty-minute flight up to Fairbanks. Unfortunately, high clouds obscured any view of Denali but it mattered little to me. I’d traveled 10, 730 miles over the past four days, from the bottom of the planet almost to the top. It was good to be home again.


March 24, 2005
Fairbanks to Seattle
Alaska 192 First Class * Dinner
737-700 N607AS Seat 1A
100p-656p Flight Time: :41 / 2:58

Despite checking in regularly with the friendly folks at Alaska’s Partner Desk in an effort to get a seat on a later flight out of Fairbanks, my efforts came up empty and I was forced to stick with my original reservation, a seat on the 1:00pm departure down to Seattle. I should add here that I certainly don’t bear any ill will towards Alaska Airlines for the paucity of available award seats out of Fairbanks. Generally, I find getting award seats on Alaska to be a fairly easy process and as I said, the staff working the Partner Desk are a friendly, capable and patient lot. The reality is that it’s March and a lot of people are looking to get out of town. I’m happy to have a First Class seat on a daytime departure rather than the dreaded 2:00am night owl down to Seattle.

In any event, my failure to get on a later flight meant I had just seventeen hours here in Fairbanks, of which I was hoping to sleep for at least eight or nine. That left me with very little time to deal with the myriad of tasks that I needed to accomplish before setting off on the next leg of this journey.

Accomplish them I did, however. Starting with a haircut, I then stopped by the insurance agency, the post office, my storage locker to restock on books and music and finally the Fred Meyer store on Airport Way to restock my coffee and vitamin supplies. By 11:00am I was ready to have lunch with friends at Lemon Grass - the other good Thai restaurant in town - before parking my truck and being dropped off at the airport. See y’all in May! Watch for postcards!

Through some fluke in reservations, I was assigned Seat 1D between Fairbanks and Anchorage and Seat 1A from Anchorage down to Seattle. On the flight out of Fairbanks, I sat next to a lady chemical engineer who knew a lot of the same people I know in Fairbanks. This included the head lab tech at the refinery in North Pole who I used to know when she was a housekeeper at the Park Hotel in Denali National Park back in 1984. Even back then, despite her seasonal position as a housekeeper, Gail had her Masters in Chemical Engineering. She’d just arrived in Alaska from North Carolina and was looking for something to tide her over while she checked out the job market in up in Fairbanks on her days off. We had a good time chatting about old acquaintances and before we knew it, we were on final into Anchorage. There, we went our separate ways, she down to Seward and me across the cabin to seat 1A.



Alaska's 737-700

Out of Anchorage, a few clouds had gathered but we still had pretty good views of most of the glaciers and big peaks along the way. Dinner was – you guessed it – another serving of Grilled Chicken Breast with Red Pepper Pesto Sauce. I never did try any of the dessert, but it looked pretty good, rather like a chocolate cheesecake.


Seattle to Vancouver
Alaska 148 First Class
DC-9-80 N958AS Seat 1A
1010p-1102p Flight Time: :33

The MD-80 was originally known as a DC-9-80 when it was first introduced in the late 1970s. Why change the name to MD-80 for this most successful variant of the DC-9?

In May of 1979, an American Airlines DC-10 crashed on takeoff from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The pylon that attaches the engine to the wing separated from the wing with catastrophic results. There were no survivors. The subsequent NTSB investigation indicated improper maintenance practices by American contributed to the crash but more importantly, design flaws in the aircraft exacerbated the situation. All of the DC-10’s hydraulic systems – the main and back-ups – were located in the leading edge of the wing. All of them were severed when the engine and pylon swung upwards under full takeoff thrust. Boeing’s 747 and Lockheed’s L-1011 had their main and back-up hydraulic lines spread throughout the wing. Why didn’t McDonnell Douglas?

Two earlier incidents involving DC-10s also pointed to design flaws. Both involved the rear cargo door’s inability to stay closed inflight. Under pressurized flight, the sudden depressurization resulting from an open rear cargo door resulted in a partial collapse of the rear passenger cabin floor. Often this affected cables that controlled the rear ailerons. In the first incident, another American DC-10 was able to limp into Buffalo. In the second, a THY Turkish DC-10 crashed outside of Paris, killing all aboard.

In the wake of the Chicago crash, the domestic DC-10 fleet was grounded. Questions were asked, investigations were launched and ultimately it was alleged that McDonnell Douglas had taken some short cuts in the DC-10 design in an effort to enjoy the competitive edge gained from being able to get the DC-10 into service before Lockheed’s L-1011.

Of course, the mainstream media put the DC-10 story front and center. The result of all this was that a lot of negative publicity was generated towards not only the DC-10 but all McDonnell Douglas products. Just like that, the successful legacy of the “DC” brand evaporated. More than a few people refused to fly upon any plane that started with a “DC”.

At the same time, McDonnell Douglas was working hard towards generating orders for its new DC-9-80. All this negative publicity towards McDonnell Douglas in the aftermath of the DC-10 incidents was not helping sales at all. So – starting with the DC-9-80 and extending to all future commercial aircraft, the “DC” was replaced by “MD”. It’s worth noting that the Douglas Aircraft Corporation had become McDonnell-Douglas some years before the DC-10 entered service, but given the success of the “DC” brand with such stars as the DC-3, DC-6, DC-8 and DC-9, it was decided to stick with “DC” for the ten.

Had there not been any problems with the DC-10, the MD-80 would still be a DC-9-80 and the MD-11 would more likely be a DC-10-50. After all, what is the MD-11 if nothing but a stretched DC-10 with improved aerodynamics? It’s like the difference between Boeing’s 747-200 and 747-400.

I once got an email from a FlyerTalk member asking why I always listed the MD-80 as a DC-9-80 in my reports. I do it because that’s what the airplane was called when I first started flying it and if you look on any of the air worthiness certificates posted inside the aircraft (either above the front door or in the cockpit), that’s what it’s still called.

I like the DC-9-80. I’ve logged over 125,000 miles aboard it and I’ll be logging another 130 miles on tonight’s short flight up to Vancouver. Short would be the operative word here. With a total flight time of just thirty-three minutes, there wasn’t much time for any more service than a cold beer and a bag of pretzels. The only shorter flights I’ve been on aboard DC-9-80s have been inter-island hops on Hawaiian Air in the 1980s and a ten mile, seven minute flight from San Francisco to Oakland aboard Alaska Airlines a few years ago.

In Vancouver, we parked next door to a big HMY Harmony Airways 757 arriving from Las Vegas. It was unloading at the same time we were so I wasted no time in disembarking to hopefully beat the big glut of passengers soon to be descending upon immigration.

Vancouver International is a beautiful airport. Wood, glass, steel and stone have been combined to create an attractive, spacious and functional facility. Unfortunately, the designers did not create any dark and quiet places to sleep. The entire airport was brightly lit and down in the baggage claim areas, all night TV blared from the baggage carousels. I did find a reasonably quiet but well lit lounge area where I set up camp with four or five other weary travelers. While they tried to get comfortable atop banks of chairs, I unfurled and inflated my Thermarest Pad, pulled out my pillow and threw my sleeping bag over me like a quilt. I slept comfortably until my alarm went off at 6:30am.