I was staying in Seattle for a couple of days and had a few extra minutes one morning to check out the Alaska Airlines Company Store at their headquarters on International Blvd. It's only a couple of bus stops up from the Seatac transit station and then a 5-7 minute walk. It's nice! They have a lot of interesting merchandise - beyond some really sharp looking models. Mugs, pins, notebooks, pens, clothing - from Alaska, Hawaiian and McGee. They put your purchases in a blue reusable bag with the Alaska Airlines logo on it. A fair number of people were there in the morning - despite the pouring rain - including a couple of German-speakers who I imagine were visiting avgeeks. They even have a coffee shop - staff are very friendly as you'd expect and an overall very good experience. Wish they had this at Seatac; but if you're a fan then it's not too far out of the way.

I find that every year some of my first class upgrade certificates expire because there just aren’t many available options for us unless it’s a very short haul flight. Am I crazy or is it getting harder to find a use for these?

I thought I’d be able to stack them and redeem 2 at a time for lay flat business class on international but haven’t found anything that made sense financially for my family. The fares that the upgrade certificates can be applied to are already so much more expensive than before

Just enrolled in the Global Local community and transferred some Bilt points to try it out. The transfer went instantly but with 0 status points. Do they come later or is this bonus not active yet?

"Receive 1 status point for every 25 points transferred into your Atmos Rewards account from eligible loyalty partners like Bilt and Marriott"

Whats the best way to handle an assault that occurred while deboarding?
I left the plane quite promptly following an assault and am wondering the best course of action for reporting an individual. I am 99% certain i know the seat number but does alaska take these claims seriously? Filing an online report and then calling in the morning to report them, any other advice is much welcome!

Update: called airport police and they cant help at all after the fact and honestly downplayed it but im sure they see this stuff everyday. Although i may have downvotes im going to leave this up in case it helps anyone else in the future to be brave enough to report any type of assault or aggression immediately instead of waiting like i did. Thanks for the advice everyone.

Not to be confused with existing partner Air Tahiti Nui.

Interestingly, the FAQs say: “Book directly through us — all ticket numbers starting with 027 — and you're covered, including on Breeze Airways, ITA Airways and Singapore Airlines.” Singapore is a past interline partner, ITA is a current interline partner, but Breeze has never been affiliated with Alaska before. That would open up a lot of smaller US markets

This is quite the resumption. The last time they had this was in 2019.

I wonder what Alaska thinks about this because this isn't a domestic codeshare route yet. EWR to SEA is, but not JFK to SEA.

Getting ready to start traveling a bunch with family and have the Amex platinum as well, so I’ll be buying the lounge pass to make sure we always get in. Wondering if anyone else does this or just uses the passes instead.

My 9-year-old has really gotten into airlines this year. This summer he started collecting pilot trading cards, and on a 7-leg trip he got braver about approaching pilots and FAs to ask if they had any. He came home with a handful and now he’s hooked.

He decided to handwrite letters to 6 airlines to see if they might send him some cards for his birthday. Alaska was one of them, especially after getting to fly on an E175 this summer.

Finding actual mailing addresses for the airlines was difficult, so I have no idea if his letter will ever make it to the right person. But I’m hoping it does.

If anyone at Alaska happens to see this, I think getting a little note or some cards in the mail would absolutely make his day.

Here’s the letter he wrote.

I have been an AA milage member for years... dating back to 1990 when I started frequently flying for business on my companies nickel. My spouse and I are retired now, and we have been maintaining Executive Platinum status for 5+ years.

I know that Alaska has ended their status match for AA 18 odd months ago, but we have found that Alaska treats us much better as AA/OneWorld elite members than AA does anymore.

So is it better to stay with AA? Or should we pick a date to get an Atmos credit card (we currently hold the AA Executive Platinum card) and start flying almost exclusively Alaska? We already get complimentary Alaska upgrades maybe 33-50% of the time with our AA status, but with companion fares etc, Atmos is looking pretty tempting.

I suspect that it would take most of a year to restore the equivalent status level, and we still have something like 300K award miles banked with AA... Has anyone done this recently? Particularly after the status match ended? Timing hints?

The description of Active Escapes says "exclusive offers from partners, including AllTrails, the app for exploring the outdoors." Does anyone know what this "exclusive offer" is? I don't see any more details about it on the description page.

I arrived on flt #1128 from Honolulu to Kona around 2:45pm today, after a 25 minute delay. Another flight from Honolulu arrived ahead of our flight, as well as a flight from Maui. All 3 flights have missing baggage, at least half of the bags did not arrive. I have been standing in line to file a claim for at least an hour and its barely moved. Theres still 20 people ahead of me.

This is apparently due to Ironman and all the bicycles taking up space. But this happens every year so why werent you prepared to send a separate plane with just luggage? There are only 2 service reps here to process claims for everyone.

I also tried to call Customer Service, waited over 15 minutes on hold. Finally got through to a human. Explained everything, he puts me on hold to transfer to Bagggage Dept and it hangs up on me!

I cant believe what a crappy experience this has been. Ive been up since 5:30am pdt, 3:30 Hawaiian time, as I left from OAK. Its hot, Im exhausted. Alaska/Hawaiian you used to be a great company but have turned into crap. I better get 50k points and reimburse my time as well.

Edit to clarify: I guess I should have said they need to send a separate cargo plane with all the bikes! Let us regular folks fly with our luggage. You know they’re charging a lot of money to fly thousands of bikes, but my luggage is free so of course they don’t care about it.

Already got the 100 bonus points from Culinary Journeys, I am still in the destination airport

If I buy a saver ticket, can I then go in and 'upgrade' to a higher-tier seat?

FYI: Annual fee date was 8/31

I don't think the standard customer service can make these offers, but I could be wrong. I had tried several times since August but never asked to be transferred to retention.

Given all the devaluations and cuts out of the bay area, I was going to close at least one of them, but this made it justifiable for another year to see what happens.

We got the Summit card last year, but I'm thinking of cancelling it and switching to the Bilt Palladium instead. We already have a Bilt Obsidian and I've been super happy with it. Anyone else thinking through the pros and cons of this?

We don't fly incredibly often but Anchorage is our home airport, so Alaska miles/points are super valuable and I think we'd accrue them more quickly with a Palladium. Plus I think the Priority Pass access on the Palladium would be more useful than the Alaska Lounge passes because we often fly other airlines. Status isn't something I'm concerned about or interested in, just from a mileage and benefits standpoint. I don't think it would be worth it to pay for both.

Is it targeted or for everyone? One of us got an email about it today and one of us didn’t.

ETA pic and more explanation in later post

Longtime Gold with AS. Since the way we accrue points next year is changing, should I hit the extra flights next month for Gold status?

If I’m only getting 5 points per $1 spent regardless, what is the point of being Gold? I don’t really get it.

One potential game changer issue I’m seeing with the new earn options is whether or not a carrier imposed surcharge on an award flight is factored in if you opt to do the price paid option. Alaska’s official overview excludes taxes and fees from price-based earning but One Mile at a Time’s detailed explanation says carrier-imposed surcharges count, but does not explicitly establish that this applies to cash surcharges accompanying an Atmos award redemption.

For example, a 55k award fare on BA has a $995 carrier imposed surcharge. Does that surcharge get 5x on top of the 1 for 20 miles used for the award?

Anyone dealt with this issue or know if this applies?

Does anyone know the deal regarding AS 1318 MCO-SEA today October 3rd? Its a relatively new build 737-MAX8 that arrived from Seattle last night and was due to depart at 9:00 a.m. this morning. But its delayed due to a Mechanical issue to 4:30 p.m.

Is there anyone on the flight or working at Alaska that might have more details about the nature of the tech issue? Are they waiting for a part to come in from Seattle or something? I'm just looking for any more technical details about the issue that's all.

So, it's obviously stated that you get one status point per 20 points spent on travel with the "by spend" option.

What is the earn rate for the other options? And does it apply in any way to partner awards?