Mea culpa: I just paid full F fare for JFK-SFO on Alaska
 

I assumed if the fare was about the same as the flat-bed seat J fare on UA, AA, Delta, and Jet Blue, that the worst I would get was the somewhat limited recline seats found on the old Virgin America.

Wrong! This was the worst F/J transcon that I've been on ever since flat bed seats came on the route at least 10 years ago. I had seat 1C so didn't even have decent legroom. Lots of things that made this flight terrible:

1. Seats are standard domestic first class with recline no better than in economy.

2. No pillows are provided.

3. In-flight entertainment was done by handing out a tiny monitor with throwaway earbuds as a headset.

4. There was no pre-departure drink service.

5. The first class restroom was the same size as those found on regional jets.

I'm aware that all of you knew this and that I should have too. But I didn't. It was a horrid six hours compounded by feeling cheated.

I complained on the Alaska facebook page and within minutes got this passive-agressive response: " I am sorry you were not satisfied with the first class seats. I am sorry about the service I will share your feedback with the inflight supervisor for the poor service. -Andre" Why share with the in-flight staff? It was management that cheated me.

Thanks for reading this rant. Next time, I'll check before booking!

Thomas Tusser would be proud

^

At least you earned some miles :D

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Were you on a 737-900? I actually find those seats quite comfortable, though clearly they don't recline anywhere near what you would get in business on AA or UA going cross country. The only time you'll see me in one is with an upgrade.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...cc250c2df9.jpg

Let's call it what it is. Southwest with pretend First Class. And they nail both mediocrity and friendliness better than anyone flying in the USA.

You got the double wammy of a non-airbus Alaska transcon and a "we're too busy to offer PDB" crew. Brutal combination.

P.S. Sadly pillows have been completely cut since the merger.

Yeah, that was what I had, blanket, tiny bottle of water, and all. Maybe I'm not as tolerant as you. I didn't find it comfortable because I actually like to recline significantly on a 6 hour flight, at least when I board thinking that was what I had paid for.

F is an after-thought so that AS can distinguish itself from WN.

Nice regional carrier trying to play legacy national.

Probably would have been better off finding an Airbus with the old Virgin America F seats. Although they don't go flat, they do significantly recline. There's something over 40 of those in the fleet and only 8 seats in the F cabin.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...5f49488049.jpg

I stopped paying for F after the AS/VX merger. I paid for one flight in AS F, and then never again. Before that I had not flown econony in years. But AS F is simply not worth paying for. It's not just the seats, it's the complete lack of service and lack of caring. F is treated the same as Y. There is no effort made to provide premium service.

I've now status matched to UA so I have a real option for F on long flights. I still take AS (and pay for economy) on routes with no premium F available, for the mileage earning -- if they fly where I want to go, which is getting rarer and rarer as they kill old VX routes out of SFO.

The only redeeming quality for AS right now is the FFP (which is by far the best out of the US carriers) Other than that it's an inferior product with an inferior network. Basically they are just a piggy bank to store miles earned from international partner flights. Actually flying them is more or less unnecessary.

I don't even think it's that. AS has to fly transcon/midcon ex-SEA/PDX/CA because that's a non-zero portion of the market, and you can't be in those markets and not serve transcon destinations, but they aren't trying to really serve markets outside the West Coast (DAL is just a spoke/alternate at this point, like BUR/SNA/ONT or JFK/EWR). They're still a regional carrier, it's just the region's a bit bigger than pre-VX acquisition.

Dang bro, you must be loaded!

Dang! You could've paid a fifth of the fare to fly Premium Plus (sold as Economy) on the UA Boeing 787-10 from EWR to SFO.

Being a regional carrier has nothing to do with quality. VX only served SFO and LAX (everything else was a spoke -- other than a couple of seasonal routes, all flights had at least one endpoint in SFO or LAX) and they had the best non-longhaul F of any domestic carrier until AS ruined it. It's not even just the seats; airbus F post-merger was a mockery of the pre-merger experience. It's about company culture and whether providing good service for a premium product is important or not.

Wow is everyone a bit grumpy today? This has been discussed ad nauseam here before. AS is not going to compete with a lie flat, period. What it will compete with is AA/DL/UA domestic first product, even though it doesn't have a pillow or a PDB.

And please....VX is gone, it wasn't sustainable, so lets not use it as the model.