Took a flight on Alaska Airlines recently. I arrived at the airport from the metro, which was pretty convenient. The ticketing area was a bit of a walk – I should’ve taken a different exit from the metro, but I just listened to the sign. Got the ticket and the employee near the self service kiosk was pretty helpful. Interestingly enough, I didn’t need to provide any ID to print my boarding pass. Went down to the security check and the line was relatively long. Much longer than TSA precheck and Clear. I feel like the more people who get TSA precheck and Clear, the slower those services will become haha. Perhaps if 100% of people have TSA precheck, people will start going back to the normal security check line. Got through the security check without any issues. I was an hour and a half early for the boarding so I had to find some stuff to do. Thankfully there were some restaurants, so I ate some food and tracked my fantasy football teams’ status. Doing ok this week, but we’ll see what happens on Monday. Boarded the flight and I was seated relatively far back. I was one of the first in my row, so I didn’t need to fight for overhead baggage space. The employee at the gate asked for 20 volunteers to check the bags. I don’t know if I heard her correctly, but I think that she said that they will delay boarding until they got 20 volunteers to check bags in. A bit odd. But for a 100% full flight, I guess that’s what happens.
Sat at my seat and I got the window seat. The two seats next to me were young children. They weren’t too noisy and thankfully their parents were seated close by. These children devoured movies. Set up with a couple large iPads, I watched as they went through at least 5 movies. One of them was so hungry for movies, that they rewatched their Barbie Mermaid movie and Aladdin movie. I’m convinced they didn’t watch some of the movies all the way through since I don’t think the flight is long enough to support watching so many movies. Apparently one of the plot points of the Barbie movie was that there was a mean mom that kidnapped the main character and threw her in jail and the child asked her friend what she thought about that. The friend didn’t answer. The child who watched the movie thought it was crazy especially since the main character was so pretty and nice.
I watched a movie myself. The free in-flight wifi was decent for the movie. No interruptions, except for when the pilot had an announcement. I guess that makes sense since it’s a local network, but still really smooth experience. The snacks were fine. Got some vegan pretzels that were made by a mother and daughter company. Tasted just like normal pretzels. One thing that was funny to me was the onboard refreshments. The onboard water is supplied by Boxed Water. So, it was served in paper cups. The other cold drinks were served in plastic cups. The paper cups seemed intentional because the Boxed Water company has a goal to reduce the plastic waste. I would’ve thought that the airline might as well use paper cups for all their drinks. But, it doesn’t seem like that is one of their goals.
Listened to my music. Watched as one of the children needed to charge their iPad, so they watched their movie with the screen rotated to the side since the charging cord wasn’t long enough. So the picture was facing right. Not sure if that visual makes much sense.. I wanted to help set it up so they could watch it normally, but I don’t think I should interact with strangers. Eventually the child realized that they can have the video rotated so they finally were watching the movie properly. The person in front of me was watching something. I think it was the show Burn Notice or something with the same actor – like the character who talks in a super monotone voice. I didn’t realize people like that show, but it has multiple seasons so I guess people must. I’d imagine that actor is in different shows as well, so they could’ve been watching one of those.
Eventually got to the airport and was able to get to the hotel through a cab.
Jeffrey's Thoughts 