Alaska Airline’s Operational Troubles Have Become My Troubles Too.

“If it wasn’t for disappointment, I wouldn’t have any appointment.”

--They Might Be Giants

I just read in the Wall Street Journal that for 2025 Southwest was the best airline overall, with Delta coming in third and Alaska fourth out of nine major airlines. This segways into my follow-up on my blog of last week about my problems with Delta Airline. See Delta Airlines Doesn’t Get You There Anymore – The New Travel Reality. — Abrahams Wolf-Rodda, LLC. In that blog, I also tangentially mentioned that I had some seat bumping problems with Alaska Airline.

As I have noted before in my blogs, I live bi-coastally, with homes in both Maryland and Washington State. My two children live in Seattle, WA. I travel back and forth frequently. Alaska Airline has been my preferred carrier for some time until my recent frustration and my attempt to try Delta. However, as a Seattle resident, I suppose I still have a soft spot for Alaska since they are headquartered in Seattle and a little bit of the underdog to the big integrated airlines.

To my surprise, as a result of last week’s Delta Airline blog, I was contacted by Alaska Airline Customer Service and received a very professional analysis of my recent travel problems. How much of that analysis is AI driven is not transparent, but it is clearly a step up from to old days of airline customer service. I am amazed that their system captures so much data about my travel problems. I now understand that Alaska does carefully monitor these social media posts and keeps individualized records of much of the pain they inflicted on passengers. Alaska kindly offered me two $75 vouchers and 5,000 miles for my many inconveniences. However, I consider these token gestures which barely account for the seriousness of the serial infractions of seat bumping.

Alaska’s system captured data on the two separate flights where my wife and I booked the exit row but the plane was changed and the seat configuration was no longer available; thus, we were rebooked without any notice on the day of the flights to regular coach seats. For a third flight, I had a ticket, had booked the exit row seat well in advance, had frequent flyer status, was physically seated in the exit row on the plane with all my personal possession stashed, when I was forced to move to make way for a passenger who was last in the plane door and who was likely traveling on standby; and I was moved to a middle seat, which I detest. I also had a fourth event maybe 2 plus years ago in the basic economy seating when I was paged at the gate and then moved to the back of the plane.

There was a fifth Alaska Airline incident, maybe 1.5 or so years ago, where the DC to Seattle plane had a fire suppression alert emergency and was forced to land in Chicago and offload all the passengers. OK, I am alive, and for that I am grateful. But we only got out of O’Hare that night because we rebooked our flight directly and initially paid for it rather than wait in a lengthy line for customer service to rebook us for flight the next day. We were separately compensated for that incident, albeit very inadequately, and of course, once again I lost my exit row seat on the rebooked flight from O’Hare.

We also had sixth weather related problem cancelling a flight from Seattle to DC last winter. That weather isn’t the airline’s fault. But the delayed timing of the cancellation was Alaska’s fault. The late cancellation came literally one minute after we had checked our bags. It took about 2.5 hours to sort things out, get rebooked for days later, and get our bags back. And there was $140 of unreimbursed taxi fares to the SEATAC airport and back due to Alaska’s delay in cancelling the flights. And once again I lost my exit row seating with the rebooking. Do you see an exit row seating pattern here?

My latest maladjustment was a seventh event on Hawaiian Airlines (now part of the Alaska family) three weeks ago when, at first, they took away our comfort class seating at the boarding gate and tried to hand my wife and I new tickets for  coach seats in the back of the plane. We had to refuse to board and go to a special ticket desk to fix that problem. Otherwise, we would have been separated from our 2-year-old granddaughter who was traveling with us.

I should mention on the positive side that I fell a few points shy of the Alaska frequent flyer threshold about 2 years ago and they kindly upgraded me to the 20,000-mile elite status anyway. That was nice and appreciated.

But looking back on this tale of woe over seven separate seat bumping events, I don’t think my frequent flyer status has furnished me much of value. Historically, I have always known that, and as a result I haven’t shown much loyalty to any single airline. I book my flights based on price and convenience, not the airline, albeit I have some animus towards United Airline as a result of their bad faith attempt to steal my fare monies immediately after the start of the COVID pandemic. United changed my direct flight time and added a new stop, and I rejected the new itinerary, But United refused to refund the fare. The only way I got the money refunded was by filing a complaint with the FAA..

Of course, this kind of airline dysfunction was the point of my earlier blog, albeit I reserved my most of my ire for Delta Airline for bumping me out of first class on a 10-hour flight and putting me in the middle seat in coach. But, obviously, the problem is bigger than just Delta. What is going on with the airline industry? Am I just ill-fated and unusual? Sadly, most of my best DC to Seattle flight options are a Hobson Choice between Delta, Alaska and United. And I have been having problems with all three! The Wall Street Journal recently had another article entitle “Life Is Too Short for Frequent-Flyer Miles” in which the author, Eliot Penn, made the point that when it comes to pursuing elite status, “the squeeze is not worth the juice.”  I agree. Indeed the only one who feels squeezed is me.