rustykettel

It take a couple of days to flow through from when status changes on the website to existing reservations for normal elite progression. I'd guess the same thing is going on here. If you want, call Reservations and they should be able to move you to Preferred/Preferred Plus seats. If your flight has the new Premium Class, only certain fare classes are eligible to select those seats as a Gold outside of the upgrade window.

See http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...ades-work.html
and http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...old-did-i.html

p.s. just Alaska, without the N..

WebTraveler

I agree. I did a sampling of fares to destinations from PDX-Seattle to destination and PDX-SFO to destination.

In every single case Virgin America's flights were higher, in many cases substantially higher.

Even the non-stop PDX-SFO flights were still higher.

Maybe this benefits existing Alaska customers by allowing Alaska to remain an independent airline and keeps economies of scale efficiencies. But overall, to those existing customers in PDX and maybe even in Seattle, I cannot see this offers us anything other than we can take an Alaska flight into Dallas Love Field and have a few more connection possibilities into JFK. Loser overall for us. Now in the end the lack of a competitor may end up increasing prices for us all.

eponymous_coward

VX has often not priced their flights competitively when considering connection vs. nonstop. Look at PDX/SEA-LAS for an example. They seem to generally want to have their feed consisting of SFO-originating traffic instead of competing for (generally lower priced) connecting traffic... like it or not that seems to be their strategy.

I tend to think AS might keep that strategy. SFO and LAX are not an ideal connecting point for SEA/PDX unless you're talking Mexico.

WebTraveler

I agree to a point....but if a PDX passenger wants to get to JFK he hops to Seattle or SFO. We'll never get a non-stop there. But the hop to SFO is substantially more.

Connecting in SFO could make sense if they are able to offer destinations in the southwest and Florida PDX has insufficient traffic to ever serve non-stop. But beyond that, I agree. For instance unlikely PDX will ever have sufficient traffic to Miami/FLL, so it could make sense if there was a SFO flight to those destinations...then I'd connect. Or perhaps a PDX-Houston or something like that.

Flying north to connect in Seattle for us has always been a hassle. The Horizon gates are not close to most of the mainline gates, and really is just a hassle. (i.e. get off Horizon for a long walk up ramps, then onto a train for a satellite terminal) I can fly PDX-ORD and then connect on American, and assuming I don't have a weather issue in Chicago can get to most of the same destinations quicker. So really for PDX Alaska needs to improve the connections for use in Seattle for me to use it exclusively.

eponymous_coward

If you want a hassle, try connecting SFO International A (AS gates) to T2 (VX gates). I don't believe you can do this easily without reclearing TSA and leaving the building to use the train.

Also, the distance flown PDX-SFO-JFK is longer than PDX-SEA-JFK, so AS has an incentive to put you on the route that burns less jet fuel. There is also much more frequent shuttle service in the PDX-SEA market, and SFO shorthaul routes like PDX-SFO are more likely to get snarled by ground holds, causing a misconnect.

A connection at SFO might make sense for some of the southbound routes, but it's going to be a while before SFO of LAX is in shape to handle tight connections for AS (and LAX will probably be in better shape well before SFO, VX will move out of T3 to T6 this year, but SFO T1 will be under construction for a while, which probably blocks the AA/AS swap that needs to happen in T2).

brettsir

Figured I'd leave this here, as of a few days ago if you are an AS elite flying on VX you can check in at the ticket counter and present your elite credentials and VX will wave the checked bag fees for however many bags you get free on AS. Doesn't make up for the seat selection issue but at least it's a start.

aisleorwindow

.............

safari ari

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...eage-plan.html

aisleorwindow

Thanks - that didn't come up in search.