Tag Archives for Alaska Airlines.
Alaska’s San Francisco lounge is back in Priority Pass, but access now comes with a mandatory $15 co-pay on top of your visit. The fee is annoying, but the bigger signal may be what it says about Alaska’s shrinking presence at SFO: the airline now has enough spare lounge capacity to start selling access again.
An Alaska Airlines flight attendant was photographed wearing an “ICE OUT” pin while working a recent flight, injecting a charged immigration slogan into one of the few places passengers cannot simply walk away. Whatever someone thinks about immigration enforcement, the cabin is a bad place for crew political messaging: the power imbalance is real, the slogan flattens a complicated issue, and the airline’s brand winds up carrying an employee’s personal politics.
An Alaska Airlines flight attendant says a midflight coffee maker failure sprayed her with scalding coffee, grounds, and boiling water, leaving permanent scars and ongoing medical treatment. She is not suing the airline, though — the lawsuit targets Stumptown Coffee, alleging the company’s packaging was defective and unsafe for aircraft use.
Nearly 18 months after Alaska Air Group completed its acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines, a revived passenger lawsuit is now urging a federal court to undo the deal, arguing it has reduced competition, driven up fares and cut routes.
Alaska Airlines sold a customer a paid first class seat for an 8-hour Liberia–Seattle flight — then called them to the podium at boarding and bumped them to coach because two pilots were deadheading. Pilot contracts can require premium cabin seats, and Alaska’s language is unusually aggressive about it compared to how United, Delta, and American handle “pilots over passengers.”
Just days after 526 people were listed for Alaska Airlines’ inaugural Rome flight, the standby list has ballooned to 1,145—more than the aircraft can even carry. At this point it’s turning into a meme, with staff asking people to cancel unless they’re truly planning to show up, even as seats are still for sale at higher fares.
Alaska Airlines staff refuse to let her fly after she shows up with two big cats in a single underseat carrier and insists she has “done this for years.” She escalates into a “you are ruining Christmas” rant, demands to be shown the policy “where I booked,” and argues there’s no restriction—while the agents tell her the cats don’t have enough room and she’d need separate carriers (and effectively, another underseat space).
Alaska is busy turning itself into a global airline, flying Hawaiian’s 787s from a new Seattle long-haul hub to London and beyond. But its IT still behaves like a regional carrier: if you book a London–Seattle award that starts on British Airways, Alaska’s system misreads its own 787 flight as BA and slaps roughly $500 in “Alaska-imposed” fuel surcharges on top of 150,000 miles — an expensive bug for anyone spending Atmos Rewards points.
A social media pile-on claims Alaska Airlines is “obstructing justice” because a poster tells employees not to hand passenger data to law enforcement on demand. In reality, it instructs staff to call a supervisor and insist on proper legal process — exactly what privacy laws, corporate policy, and rule of law require.
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Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
