jjmadison

This weekend I flew SFO-SEA and SEA-SFO (2hr 4min each way). I was struck by how poor the F class service was on both flights. TL;DR one drink both ways, with FAs completely absent after first drinks served.

For those that normally fly AS 737 F, is this the norm I should expect, or is this unusual?

More detail:

SFO-SEA: flight departed on time. No PDB, no greeting, and no pre-inquiry for drinks. Our first drink of the flight was offered 50 min after takeoff and then served 20 in later. Row 1 got a second drink before landing but one else. Nearing landing, an older couple in the second row loudly complained to the FA, saying they pay "hard earned money for first" and have never received worse service. The FA spent five min trying to listen and apologize, eventually saying that AS requires they prioritize food service for F, then water service and cart service for the main cabin and that while he understood their frustration, they should take it up with management. The FA did take 90 min total serving the chicken sandwich in F as well. All told, it was not clear why service was so slow and absent for the majority of the flight.

SEA-SFO: flight was 1hr delayed, then boarded early, but still no PDB for the 40 in after boarding. FAs loudly chatting in the forward cabin. One beverage service was offered 40 min into flight. FA offered snack basket and closed curtain after. Seatmate (who was apparently new to AS) snidely asked "is this what Alaska calls first class? I thought Alaska people knew how to drink." I responded that this did not seem like first service to me either and he should write into Alaska Listens. He laughed and said, not worth his time and he would simply fly Delta next time.

I've been flying primarly AS airbus transcons this year and this is a stark difference in quality of service. While it can be difficult to get service on in F after 3 hours into the flights, the first two hours are usually well-managed.

Curious to hear from west coast AS natives if this is the norm for paid F on Alaska.

VegasGambler

This is shockingly bad. Also, while not quite the new "normal", is probably the new 50% or so.

Some FAs do a really good job though.

I also don't think it's aircraft-specific -- I've had service like this on airbus too.

jjmadison

CalanMan

I'd say what you experienced on this trip isn't normal, and I certainly wouldn't defend it as okay. I fly roundtrip between SEA and SFO/SJC weekly and am often up front and I'd say that getting 2-3 drinks during the flight is more common. 4-5 if I'm just getting refills of sparkling or hot water. I'm almost always greeted when I board, but I'm also the kind of person who usually chats up the attendants and asks them how their day is going, even if they've said nothing more than "hi" to me, so I'm sure I'm affecting that experience there. I consider warmth and friendliness to be far more important to my First (or Coach) experience than a PDB or hot towel. However, if those are the metrics, I almost always get a towel, but haven't seen a full bar PDB on a flight under 4 hours in months.

I'm out of SFO ~30% of the time, which is mostly Airbus, and out of SJC ~70% of the time, which is mostly Boeing. In the last two months, I haven't noticed service on one being particularly better than the other. I've had great and lackluster crews on both.

Sadly, I'd agree that the "average" level of service I see isn't as good as either legacy AS or legacy VX. Of course, that's on average. There are still plenty of spectacular FA's in the system, from both pre-merger airlines, as well as some who, well, aren't. Alaska was always less flashy than VX, but it really was a really great airline to fly. I still have times when that legacy shines through, but would no longer tell a friend who doesn't know airlines that I could all-but-guarantee them a great experience on AS. At this point, I just say that I like AS, and they're the airline that I would choose, assuming they're choosing between decently-routed and -priced options.

From my perspective, that's basically disappeared since they started all flying together. In the period leading up to that, 737 crews were usually better, in large part because they knew how to give the service that AS gives. I think a lot of pmVX employees didn't, and were figuring it out, which often led to them thinking that it was simply less than what they were used to, rather than different in multiple ways on multiple axes, which only added to a morale problem that was already significant. I think the different groups mixing together has really helped with that.

VegasGambler

Since I never flew pmAS in F, can you explain what they offered in the way of service that pmVX didn't? Other than the hanging of jackets (which is more of an equipment thing than a service thing) I can't think of anything that I've gotten from the best AS crews (and some of them are really great) that I wouldn't also have gotten every time on VX.

In other words, I'm under the impression that it really is less; can you explain how it's different in multiple ways on multiple axes?

RAD_PDX

This is not the norm. I hope you got the names of the FAs. Write it up, move on.

Eastbay1K

I'm not the person you asked, but being FT, here you go

There was no tangible product that AS provided that was superior to VX. The intangibles were where it was at. Although I wasn't a very frequent VX flyer, I flew them enough (on long and short hauls) to get a good sense of the service and style. Other than a few lemon crews (and I hate to insult lemons), most VX crews were adequate, and some, quite nice. But I'd say there weren't any that I'd want to be friends with, where you've had a conversation that you would want to carry over into another gathering, and sorry to see the flight end. There has historically been a "warmth" with the AS crews that no other airline has ever provided (although UA at its best sure came close ex-SFO at times). And when I describe this, it isn't a matter of nice, or very nice, or insuring your glass is never less than half full, if you want it that way. I can't say I've met a VX FA that I'd want to hang out with post-flight (and no ... we're not going there ...) But AS? Once, we invited our F FA out to dinner during the FA's layover. Great fun. Another time, an FA wanted me to come over for dinner and meet her family in ANC. I've had a number of good and great conversations with AS crews over the years, and this didn't come as a detriment to service of the rest of the cabin. AS crews, even when they had little or nothing to serve after various cutbacks, did their best to make flights enjoyable. Not that I've entirely escaped some AS lemons, and some have been atrocious. You must understand that for those of us who have decades of AS flying, we got to know ground staff, lounge staff, and even see the same FAs from time to time. So, there's history, and nothing that VX could ever come close to. And now that AS is a "quasi-big-boy." what made AS so special, if it were, has no choice but to be in a waning state, just as a matter of scale.

All that said, all else being equal (similar price, flight time, status earning not a factor, etc.), I would take the VX flight over the AS flight because, well, I wanted to be more comfortable, and have better F&B.

Buster CT1K

I flew Delta in paid F recently on a flight of similar length. It was comfortable and the FAs were very focused on doing their PDBs and offered refills multiple times. I did feel the service to be better than AS's F-cabin average.

pcoll

What you posted above describes our LAX/SEA flights.
spot on as to attitude and timing of beverage and meal service we have experienced lately.
Last week, when I asked if nuts were no longer served , FA asked me if I worked for AS.(not in a nice way)
Like no one else knows about serving mixed nuts ??
Yes, I have written in and gotten the usual, "thank you , will pass this on ".

jsguyrus

Sadly, this matches my experience JFK-SEA a couple weeks ago. Everything was done that was minimally required, and that's it. But to be fair, just a few days prior on SEA-JFK the service was outstanding. Go figure?

CalanMan

So, first of all, let me say that this post is going to make me more vulnerable than I like to make myself on FlyerTalk, so be kind.

Secondly, I think this post is going to be unsatisfying to you. A little while ago, you posted about what you consider to be "flawless" service: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/31073166-post234.html I remember reading it and thinking "This person and I are never going to agree on what Alaska should be." That's not because your definition of "flawless" is in any way bad or wrong. I actually agree with it mostly. I just don't think that it's the best kind of service, or at least the kind of service I most want to get.

Like I said above, warmth and friendliness are the most important things to me. Those aren't the opposed to efficiency or attention to detail, but they are on a different axis.

For most of my life, I've dealt pretty directly with anxiety. Panic attacks aren't super uncommon for me. It's mostly triggered by claustrophobia and feeling unable to remove myself from whatever the current situation happens to be. That isn't a fear of flying, but it is something that can easily get pinged while flying. One time, while I was flying AS F, we'd landed and during taxi we had to take a long hold for some other movements to occur or something, and I was feeling really anxious. The F attendant noticed and got out of her jump seat and asked me what was wrong and if there was anything she could do. I said that if she could just engage me in conversation that it would help. She was happy to, and offered to hold my hand. She stood in the aisle, holding my hand and chatting with me about the weekend until we were moving again, maybe 10 minutes. Would I have survived if she hadn't? Sure. But that, to my sensibilities, was spectacular service. It's also something that I would have seen as out-of-character on pre-acquisition VX, and definitely something I would be shocked to get from post-merger, pre-integration AS Airbus crews.

I have many anecdotes like this, as it's the kind of service that found I could reliably get on AS, but it's also an extreme example. In less-flashy moments, it looks more like a flight attendant asking me where I'm going and being excited for me when I'm going somewhere exciting, or sympathetic if I've had a long week and am not feeling well. Maybe even commiserative if they have had one too. It's easy to see how someone on FT might say that an FA sharing with me that they've had a rough week is unprofessional, but in that context, I see it as them trying to make a connection and show empathy. Once (this was actually QX) I hurt my finger putting my bag in an E75 bin and the attendant noticed and jumped to get me a bag of ice wrapped in a napkin. He also noticed when it was covered in condensation, and asked if he could get me another one. A passenger in physical pain was prioritized more highly than drink service. That's how I want it to be.

My spouse and I had a conversation once about why we enjoyed LH F more than CX F, despite CX being inarguably more flawless, and it was because the truly excellent CX crews were so good at providing precision service, but weren't friendly in a way that a friend is friendly, which is super hard to do when you're focusing on how many centimeters each utensil is from the one next to it. The LH crew we had were so excited about the super fun vacation we were off to, and how cool it was that we got to fly in beds to do it. That flight was years ago and I had never had caviar before and I had to ask how one is supposed to eat it. The purser was delighted that I'd asked and enthusiastically showed me what combination of things to do. I think I would have been too embarrassed to ask a CX attendant how to do something like that.

That's not me saying that AS F is as good as long haul LH F. It obviously isn't. But the ways that AS F was stronger than VX F are along the same axis where LH F shines, and that makes me think I'm not totally alone in valuing that kind of service.

Of course, that kind of service is harder to really quantify. I can keep a spreadsheet that tells me what % of the time I've had someone offer to hang my coat or ask if I want a PDB, and how often that was a full-bar PDB or just water/juice/coffee/bubby. It's way harder to say exactly how often I got really warm, friendly service. Not every flight has an anxiety attack (thank goodness for that!) that the FA can respond to, and not every flight is either exciting or exhausting for the FA to empathize with. So I'll never win any FT arguments based on these criteria. But since you asked in what ways AS service was clearly superior. That's it.

CalanMan

I was the person being asked, and I think this is a great response, and certainly more concise than mine! We actually invited the FAs on our flight out to our wedding in Hawaii to stop by the reception and have a drink. (Sadly, they couldn't, because their layover wasn't long enough for them to still be there three days later when the wedding happened.)

I also agree that as AS grows that it will be harder and harder to maintain that culture. It's possible that we'll look back at the VX acquisition as being the death of the AS many loved, in the same way that both pmUA and pmCO fans seem to be less enthusiastic about the new UA. I have hope that's not the case, just based on the old culture still shining through, but we'll see.

bmw745ion19s

I flew MCO-SAN recently. I usually fly AA F so cant fully compare on one flight but what I noticed:

We were delayed at the gate for about 40 mins with no offer of PDB until about 30 minutes into that they came around with OJ or Coffee. I dont drink either and asked for liquor but she said that would have to wait until after take off.

After take off over the gulf we encountered pretty bad turbulence so start of meal service was delayed by the Captain until we got back over land near Biloxi. After this rough start though the service was great. We had 2 flight attendants doing the dinner service with frequent offers for drink refills of wine, liquor, and water. The other FA who would come up from economy to assist was also very active in offering refills etc. They were all also very friendly and seemed genuinely happy and eager to help.

I would certainly take this non stop flight again, just wish they would get on board with PDB!!!!

VegasGambler

I think I understand what @CalanMan and @Eastbay1K are saying. It's true, this is just not what I'm looking for from a flight attendant (or, anyone, really). I'm mostly a private person. I'll make smalltalk with strangers mostly out of social obligation, but I'm generally happy when it's over unless we happen to have something in common that leads to an interesting discussion. Basically I just want to be left alone with my drink and my thoughts in my comfortable seat.

BTW, my FAs on SNA-SFO (Horizon) were great. I was in premium. I had a short conversation with the FA during drink service while she was making my drink, which was great. She did manage to splash coffee on me (it took her two attempts) but it was kind of funny, she was very apologetic, and I didn't really care. The other FA (the one doing F) seemed to be great too.

I didn't get my chocolate bar though. I'm unclear about whether I'm supposed to in premium. I did have Baileys and Hazelnut Espresso vodka in my coffee so it was all good. The coffee was basically 1/4 booze.

RAD_PDX

This is brilliant! I will have to give it a try.