The 'Famine in First' issue ties directly into the issue of a dearth of upgrade availability. If I were able to upgrade cheapie tickets by dint of my Gold status, then complaining about the AS F experience would ring hollow. Alas, riding up front isn't cheap.

I flew over 60K this year on AS metal and either bought F tickets outright (about 20% of the time) or purchased high fare buckets (in many cases higher than the competition) so as to get an MVP upgrade. I often had to choose less than ideal flight times or routings in order to find Gold availability to begin with. No one nowadays is getting to the front of an Alaska bus on a cheapie ticket; and if AS is going to make me pay a proper fare for a seat in First, I have every reason to expect - nay, demand - proper treatment in First.

What constitutes proper treatment in First? Let's start with equipment.

Those limited pitch short leather seats with worn-out padding may have have been nice when they were first introduced, but they're pretty underwhelming today. I want a few more inches of recline in a repadded seat, thank you.

The digEplayer constitutes IFE only when one is an infrequent AS flier. Whether by design or neglect, digEplayer content is changed once every two months or so. According to an article in the latest issue of the in-flight magazine, the digEplayer was designed to hold scores of movies: why then are there only a handful (most of them dated) ever loaded?

The food issue is one I've already expounded upon. I don't care what time the flight departs, I expect to be fed something more than nuked nuts in F. Pax are coming from a myriad of time zones, so its a safe bet that its always time to eat somewhere on earth.

A word on pre-departure drinks. If AS isn't going to bother serving them and instead put a disposable plastic bottle of water by every F seat instead, might it be possible for AS to, you know, actually put a disposable plastic bottle of water by every F seat? I get one maybe 2/3rds of the time; and of course it's only when I'm thirsty that it isn't there.

To recap: the AS F cabin has worn-out seats, substandard IFE, often nonexistent food and unreliable service. So there.

If AS implemented the above recommendations, their F cabin would be worth paying for.