PaperGlider

Hi All,

Its been about a year since I've been flying and also following this forum. I hope you have all been well.

I am pleased to now resume flying. As such, I am seeing many changes that affect my decisions for airlines, flights, memberships, credit cards, and more. For a traveler who has been out of the travel scene for the last 12 months, what would they want to know?

For AS, here is my working list. I hope you can help by correcting it or adding to it. Thanks.

a. Use the chat or text methods to communicate with AS customer service. The phone reservation line is no longer worth calling unless you can wait. You can get put on hold or a call back wait list that can last 4 hours or more.

b. First Class difference is less: The first class difference of benefits no longer include the snacks and drinks for short flights. I got a bottle of water. Is there food and drink on longer flights?

c. Lounges benefits are less available: Some lounges are closed. Those that are open have limited hours. Food and drink in these lounges are not as extensive as they were before. There are no longer buffets and most food offerings are pre-packaged. This affects my decision regarding credit cards, lounge memberships, and purchasing tickets.

d. Routes have some changes. The frequency of flights are less and change more. Equipment for SFO-LAX are E175's

e. Airports have a lot of hand gel stations.

f. After arrival at the gate, most flyers know to stay in their seats until it is their row's turn to exit.

g. Best ways to use AS FF miles? How and when?

h. Anything else?

Best,

Repooc17

Old habits die hard. In recent weeks/months, more and more pax have ignored FA's requests to sit tight until their rows have been called.

Not getting into a conversation about my take on the subject; only reporting observations after some 60, 70 flights over the past few months, and traveling with multiple carriers (AA, AS, B6, DL, UA). Also, there have been higher occurrences of no special deplane procedure announcements, especially on widebodies.

PDXpress

As long as you don't call during a Seattle snow storm, my experience has been that call wait times aren't any longer. But I've really come to love texting with the reservations agents. It's great. During the great snow of mid February 2021 a text agent got back to me surprisingly quickly. And don't forget Twitter.

RAD_PDX

There are several good threads on here that should help answer all of these questions.

pdxasflyer

I had forgotten about this feature - can you remind us how that works or what the number is to text to?

NoLaGent

I love the text team too.

beckoa

Wine. In a can.

PaperGlider

Thanks for the warning. I'll bring my own glass. I hope I like the wine that comes from the can.

Robt760

TEXT AS RESERVATIONS @ 82008

It's a great feature, except when "in flight" often times (even with fully connected GoGo) the messages are delayed or not received...often causing further frustration.

Flying for Fun

It's a great feature, except when it isn't! I will add that, as I found out yesterday, texting 82008 is "capped." If the system is capped out, it will immediately close the session and your message is neither delivered nor acted upon.

It was a lovely Twitter Agent who advised me after stating she could not help with the "scope" my request.

James

PDXPremier

I will say I prefer the online chat option vs the texting option....as much as the Twitter team at Alaska is awesome, since the launch of the text/chat option, it seems like the Twitter team is more limited in what they can/will do now.

TravelingZoomer

What's new: Masks, lack of hard alc in F, in my experience it's pretty easy to get into AS lounge with PP (YMMV).

Not New: Great CS by AS team, and the odd look I get from check-in agents when they see I'm doing a sameday turnaround

beckoa

Oh that's what happened last month.

PaperGlider

Some inconsistencies. Last week sanitizing wipes were handed out in F. Today wipes were not supplied.

It's uncomfortable to snack on the the Swedish Fish (made in Turkey) without a hand sanitizer after handling the seatbelt etc.

jrl767

had a “similar-but-different” situation last week — opened a chat and got a response asking for my name and the PNR, and immediately after I finished entering the info there were two more agents asking ... replied that I was working with the first one (by name), and within a few seconds all three chats terminated “due to no response”

called in, declined a callback because the wait was only 4 to 7 minutes, agent picked up within about 3