BallardFlyer

Enigma368

I'd be almost certain that had you not seen, or simply ignored the time change notification, and turned up at the gate at the last permissible minute for the scheduled 8.30am flight, they would be waiting there for you. I imagine, if the load is very light, they hope asking people to come early so they can leave early will work but would be fully prepared to wait until the scheduled departure time if someone didn't see the notification. There are many situations e.g. where someone could be driving from far away to arrive at the airport at 7.30am to make the 8.30am flight. I can see no situation where Alaska would be allowed to blame the customer for this. Recommending people arrive at the airport 2 hours before the flight is not the same as requiring.

And even if the above was not true, I am 100% sure they would rebook you at their expense an compensate you if they did leave without you in those circumstances.

I would not have rushed for this flight in your position as I do not think it is fair to do this to a customer last minute. Unless there was an impending hurricane or some other situation out of Alaska's control ofc.

princeville

This happened to me last September on a LAX-SEA flight, but I never even received official notification. My app had an alert that boarding had started ridiculously early. Then they made an announcement in the lounge that this flight was departing early and it was final call for boarding, so we abandoned our bloody marys and went to the gate (fortunately next door) and were two of last people on the plane. We sat for several minutes after boarding and I think we ended up pushing back ~20 minutes early. They said it was because of the runway construction in Seattle, so they had to jump on a landing slot when they could get it. And it was not a light load. Kind of annoying, but also understandable because I know how runway closures cause delays that just worsen throughout the day. I do hope they put anyone that may have missed it on another flight without any grief, though.

bmvaughn

Same. I've had >1000 flights since 2007 and this was a first for me too.

Weather I can understand. This was in Juneau as well, but it was just for JNU-SEA, AS66 (last flight of the night). There should have been no duty restrictions at play, unless the crew working our plane had last minute changed from another scheduled line.

Yep, very light for us too. The gate agent was actually asking over the intercom for anyone with a birthday or anniversary or anything special since she had 3 open F seats.


I've emailed Customer Care to ask for an explanation. For us, the frustration came from the fact that I've taken this flight at least monthly for the past year and we have a regular schedule of having dinner right before going to the airport, so that was hurried and I had to actually leave early before we were done eating.

sltlyamusd

It looks like there is a lot of schedule padding for AS 66 in JNU (75 min scheduled on the ground). Assuming it was 2/27, AS 66 does show 24 minutes early leaving JNU...

CDKing

at 20 min before my last flight they were calling final call door closes in 2 min, only to sit there a few min past departure time.

formeraa

HA! That's what they did in Phoenix last summer, boarded way early and let us sit in a overly warm plane (120 outside, can't really keep fully loaded plane cool) for 25 minutes until the exact departure time though nobody else boarded the plane.

bmvaughn

Heard back from Alaska Customer Care shortly after contacting, but forgot to provide an update here.

Here's the response, emphasis added
There was no inclement weather. I'm letting it go though...

Akck

formeraa

My flights tend to leave on-time with early boarding, if the plane is already there. For example, last summer in PHX, we boarded at T-45 and sat on a warm plane with insufficient A/C until the exact scheduled departure time. Why didn't we just board at T-30 in this case? I have no idea, but AS is all over the place.

jrl767