From Cranky Flyer’s interview with Hawaiian CEO Diana Birkett Rakow and Head of Hawaiʻi Operations Jim Landers:

* Interisland aircraft will be based in the island and are not planned to do mainland turns
* Not planning to pull out of any smaller interisland routes or reduce frequency considerably
* HA is okay with flying empty planes at off-peak hours if it gives them more capacity at peak times
* Interior and exterior will feature Hawaiian branding and colors, including bulkheads and seat covers
* Improved First Class product enables better connectivity from Japan etc. to outer islands
* A321neo will be around for a while, they need the capacity

After flying to Tokyo with friends and seeing them get upgraded I dove into this subreddit. Weirdly it’s kind of a hobby and I’ve learned way too much about credit card points, status, upgrade certificates, and lounge access.

I’m fortunate enough to have a business where it makes sense to have the Atmos Summit card and put expenses through it. It’s been easier for me than some to buy status.

Yesterday on a domestic flight I was upgraded to first class! Mission accomplished! Y’all get sandwiches in first class on 3 hour flights instead of chips???

The goal was to be able to travel internationally business class, I’m learning that might be a little harder than I thought. Still, might be able to make that happen. I just need to be a bit more flexible on timing.

For anyone else on this same weird journey I highly recommend the site seats.aero to find the best value for your miles and which flights you could be upgraded on. I pay for the pro version and think it’s worth it.

I submitted 4 upgrade certs for my son's and my flight to japan next month. Looks like there are currently 6 business class seats left. Wondering if anybody has been upgraded on certs for international flights or if this is a mirage.

Hi,
The airline admitted fault to my first flight - from Vancouver to Seattle we got stuck on the tarmac for 40 minutes making me miss my Seattle to Honolulu then to Sydney.
There’s only one Sydney flight so I missed that and am now stuck and delayed.
The food vouchers don’t cover enough for meals ($12 usd each is insanely low!) and I’ve had to pay extra on top.
I’m wondering if anyone has had any success. I’d be okay with Qantas Frequent Flyer points even. Just something! How would I contact them? Should I try at the desk when I get back for my Honolulu to Sydney flight? Currently at the hotel they’ve provided.

Is this a normal experience. I’ve never flown them but all my connections were under an hour - very very tight (on one ticket). It’s why I’m in Honolulu right now because I don’t want to risk staying in Seattle and having a repeat with a one hour connection.

EDIT:
After an hour and 15 minute call, it has been corrected. I still don’t have a clear understanding as to what happened and why it was changed, but it is corrected and I am happy. Thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions.

I am not a frequent flyer and could use some help understanding this. I bought and paid for a first class ticket, picked my seat and thought all was well. I just checked back on the app to make sure everything was good and my seat is gone with no other seat assigned. It’s also trying to charge me an additional $700 for the first class seat. I already paid for.

Is this something that happens often? what is my recourse? Is there anything I can do? Am I left having to sit on hold with Alaska again for God knows how long?

Hello, I have some travel coming up as a family. The American Airlines flight is showing as Operated by Skywest as Alaskaskywest. I got an AS confirmation code and had to go to Alaska site to select seats.

Any way to get free checked bags on this flight? By applying for a American or Alaska credit card?

Sometimes I’m tempted to pay for the fc upgrade just for the extra status points, but I’ve heard that sometimes paid upgrades still only land you in U class. Also would be nice to know if it was the 150% or 200% to determine the value.

Is there any way to see before paying? Or the option to refund the upgrade if it’s a dud?

TL;dr: what the heck do I do with all these customer care certificates?!

Our family of four has a pile of $50 customer care certificates automatically issued from various delays over the last year. I really wish they would just issue points instead but I assume AS is banking on the fact that the certificate is a good will gesture for which they won't necessarily have to pay.

My solo travel is not frequent enough to burn through them. When booking for the family, it's annoying enough to book two and two for upgrade purposes; so there is no way I'm booking 3-4 separate tickets to use the certificates. And we have a steady supply of companion fares to use between me, my, wife, and my in-laws; when we aren't using those, we're typically using miles. So lots of purchases where the certificates can't stack.

Anyone have some better idea about how to think about this and maximize the value of the certificates?

How many Alaska Airlines miles and status points can I earn for this American Airlines award ticket with fare type Y, which I booked on the American Airlines website?

I've been having trouble logging into the Alaska Airlines app and on my laptop for about 2-3 weeks now. Figured I'd share this data point in case it helps someone else.

I read through the error message on the login page and made sure my VPN was off, even disabled Private Relay for good measure — still nothing. Then I read closer and noticed it mentioned content blockers.

Didn't make sense to me at first — how does an ad blocker stop you from logging in when every other site works fine with it on? But sure enough, that was it. Turned off AdGuard and I could finally log in.

What really got me is that it was even blocking logins on the app, not just the website.

Half thank-you, half FU to Alaska on this one — thanks AdGuard for showing me how much you were actually blocking, but come on Alaska, making login only work with ad blockers disabled? I get you want that sweet tracking data, but that was a wild ride to troubleshoot.

TL;DR: If you can't log in, try disabling your ad blocker (AdGuard, etc.) — worked for me after weeks of issues.

Flight from MCO to SEA. About an hour before the flight is set to board, my seat allocation disappears. I checked in 24 hrs before. I had a seat assigned, I was 1st on the upgrade list and was thinking I was getting upgraded since I was looking at the seat selection, it only showed me the first class seats.

But the confusing thing is that it wouldn’t let me select the seat. I checked the boarding pass and it said to see agent.

When I arrived to the desk, they told me I didn’t have a seat assigned at all. Then they told me I didn’t check in even though I checked in and got a boarding pass with a seat assignment. I had a screenshot of it and showed the agent. She told me I wasn’t on the upgrade list.

I was confused and the agent wasn’t handling the situation with any urgency. Said they can assign me to a seat that wasn’t originally booked and I said that wouldn’t work. I asked why this happened and she was snippy and inpatient.

Why did this happen? What did I do wrong?

I have a flight tomorrow so went online to login to begin the check-in process. After entering authentication credentials, I get an error screen (see pic). I am using vanilla recent release Chrome browser with no extensions installed on Linux PC and no VPN being used. I repeated the process on my Macbook using vanilla Chrome & Safari browsers with no VPN and get the same results. I deleted the Alaska cookie too but still same result. I also do not have AdBlocked installed. I was able to check-in using the Alaska app on my Pixel phone however.

What is causing this? I've NEVER had an issue with logging into alaskaair.com before? Do Alaska tech customer support read this sub?

Never seen this on AS

It’s a 6 hour daytime flight (3:20pm-9:10pm) and the app and website says “pre order is unavailable for this flight and meals will likely not be available on board. Please prepare accordingly.”

Obviously I’m preparing accordingly, but it seems bonkers to me that a 6 hour flight at that time of day wouldn’t have any meals or snack options available at all? Is this normal or did something go wrong with supply chain or something?

I understand there are differences between the Hawaiian branded flights vs Alaska branded, but our leg right before that one (PDX-HNL) is also 6 hours and also branded Hawaiian, and that one had full meal menu available for pre order.

EDIT TO ADD: sorry for confusion, I’m not worried about not being able to pre order for this leg as it is international and different processes apply. I’m worried about the second part of the message that says “and meals will likely not be available.” I only mentioned the pre ordering for the other leg bc that confirmed the other leg of similar length and same brand was definitely providing a meal.

(We are Premium class, which I don’t think changes anything re: food options but adding it just in case I’m wrong.)

I have a few questions about flying with our two cats. We’re moving from the east coast back to Oregon next week. We have tickets from Boston to Portland including reservations for the cats. They are updated on their rabies vaccines. Is a CVI ( certificate of veterinary inspection) actually necessary? Alaska doesn’t require anything but supposedly Oregon does. My vet says they don’t even offer these and it would be massively inconvenient for me to take my cats to a vet again in the middle of moving anyway.

Also, cats in carriers apparently count as carry-on. So we can each have a cat and a carry on suitcase but not a hand bag or small backpack? Do they really care? It’s me and my teenage son traveling. I am an Alaska cardholder.

We did fly with these cats 4 years ago, and they did ok (with some Gabapentin). Just don’t recall anything about a CVI or the limited carry on.

Thanks for any insight!!

This has been hinted at before (and I assume this article is based on new information), but perhaps it might be closer to actually happening:

Iberia appears to be evaluating four additional nonstop routes between Madrid Barajas Airport (MAD) and the United States as the Spanish flag carrier continues its rapid North American expansion. A newly circulated planning map indicates that the airline is studying service to Atlanta, Detroit, Seattle, and Las Vegas, complementing an already growing transatlantic network from its Madrid hub. While none of the routes have been officially announced, the proposal offers insight into where Iberia sees future growth opportunities as demand for Spain-US travel remains strong....

Seattle presents a different strategic opportunity. While Delta has expanded aggressively at SEA over the past decade, the airport also serves as the primary hub for Alaska Airlines, one of Iberia's fellow oneworld members. A nonstop Madrid service could benefit from Alaska's extensive West Coast network, allowing passengers to connect beyond Seattle to destinations throughout the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and the western United States.

Certainly more oneworld longhaul flights at SEA would be good for AS, but I assume this would also take this route off the potential AS list (if it happened).

Hubs and I are flying Alaska Airlines close to our anniversary, but to a memorial. I saw upgrade to 1st class came down and decided to upgrade us…anniversary treat. Now we need to select a meal. Anybody have recommendations for or against? That last one is missing bacon at the end.

I just noticed it today, but perhaps it has been happening for a while. "seattletimesnewsroom" appears to have a bot that automatically posts its AS-related articles on this sub, regardless of whether there is a post on the topic already. The links are behind a paywall so they are inaccessible to everyone other than subscribers, making them essentially marketing. Thus, the posts are both helpful and not helpful and, at best, skirt the "use the search feature before posting" rule, resulting in parallel discussions on the same topic.

Perhaps this is a moderator question but I thought I would make it a post. Apologies if this is the wrong approach.

Sample below:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AlaskaAirlines/comments/1v2xx2n/alaska_air_posts_76m_quarterly_loss_amid/

I have not carefully studied this, but the upshot appears to be that Q2 wasn't as bad as feared and they are cautiously optimistic about meaningful improvement in Q3.

First time seeing this line at the baggage/check in space. Very cool as someone with Titanium, and a bit confusing since I have never heard of Suites!

Maybe someone can correct me, but I think it’s the AS version of Business Class for the long intercontinental flights

This is PDX.

I know there’s some repeated info on my post, but with AS system continually “improving”, I thought I’d share my experience this month.

Cathay
I tried booking 5 economy award tickets, for my family and I, round trip from MNL-HKG-MLN. I had read that there’s a lot of phantom awards, but I didn’t buy that for this situation since there are 5 flights a day with lots of award space. So I thought maybe it’s because I’m booking 5? And that was the key to make it work; I booked 3 and then 2!

It did make me have to “link” the 2, although that didn’t really make a difference.

FYI, Cathay only lets me pre book a seat. Since I’m Gold/OW Sapphire I got 48 checkin, compared to 24 hours. So I chose our 3 seats close to open seats that I could book the other 2 seats at 24 hour mark.

FYI 2, no biz class awards either way.

FYI 3, I user biz/priority check in line, but OW highest line counter waved us over. I sensed she wanted to upgrade me, but never did. Why do I suspect? At the beginning and then the end said “I see you’ve made your seat selection online?”. I was like “yes”.

Qatar
This booking was for work, so just me. I decided to do 1 way bookings as my itinerary is still in flux. MNL-EBB, worked fine; unfortunately only economy, as I missed 85k biz award by a few days. Lesson learned, book when available, cancel if needed.

For my return, EBB-MNL, there was an 85k biz available. But I had a similar error as when I booked Cathay! But it was only 1 seat?! Arg. There were 2 flights so tried the other. Didn’t matter. I thought maybe it’s the AS app compared to website, so tried on my laptop; still no luck :( Later when I was out, I tried on my phone again. And it worked!

So what’s the secret? No idea…keep trying.

Payment, but no Ticket
Yes, AS will accept a card charge without issuing an award ticket. However, DON’T WORRY. The pending charge reverses before it actually hits your credit card. I’ve had close to $2k in fees pending, thankfully none actually charged me and it required zero customer support investment.

Personal
If you can get the Summit card and live outside the US, it’s a great deal. I started in the miles and points game during Covid, I had figured out premium cards, hotel cards, but had yet figured out the airlines space. Summit came at the perfect time for me!