Comments on: Alaska Airlines Sucks! (WARNING: DO NOT FLY!)

By: KL Cheng

KL Cheng — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:35:18 +0000

Dear Bryan,

I would like you to ask your Daddy for the management’s contacts.
Anyone who can help would be good.

Thank you.

Cheng KL

By: KL Cheng

KL Cheng — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:27:51 +0000

My experience from LA to Anchorage.
Check-in counter closed 2 minutes before we were at counter.
This was due to an earlier cancelled flight (reason being the pilots exceeded rest time), causing a long queue at the counter.
Our confirmed seats were given away.
Waited at the airport for 8 hours + 2 hours delay for a connecting flight via Seattle to Anchorage.
No meal voucher or anything.
At Seattle we ran for out connecting flight.
Arrived Anchorage without our luggage.
Total airport time: 16.5 hours
Luggage recovered 5 days later in LA.
Wrote in for compensation.
After a few e-mails, ALASKA AIRLINES refuse to reply anymore, said something about Singapore Airlines will compensate us.
What a load of shit.

Anyone has contacts to higher management?

By: Francois Gossieaux

Francois Gossieaux — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:02:03 +0000

Tell daddy to complain to management

By: Bow Wow

Bow Wow — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:01:40 +0000

My dad works for tha Alaska Airlines so shut up!!!!!!!!!!

By: bryan

bryan — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 23:42:14 +0000

I just had the WORST experience every flying on, you guessed it, Alsaka Airlines. Long story short: Travelling with two 12 year olds and a dog, I booked and paid for 4 first class tickets from Spokane to Seattle then on to Orange County without changing planes. Easy enough, right? We get to the airline an hour and a half early, and are promptly told that there is a 3 hour delay (on a Mon. with perfect weather?), but that there would be no problem with the flights. After waiting for three hours, we ask if it is on time, and are told that they decided to cancel the Seattle to OC portion of our flight (with no announcement) and attempt to put us up for the night in a crappy hotel in Seattle. The lady “helping” us just said “sorry, we just dropped the ball on this one”; after speaking to a supervisor he figured out that if we went from Spokane to Seattle to Portland to Orange County, we would “only” get home 6 hours later than expected. However, what is still not addressed is that the flights we paid for were supposed to be first class, and the ones we got were coach. Oh, I almost forgot; I still don’t have my 5 bags I checked on. I am now going to tell my credit card company that I dispute the entire charge on my credit card, since I clearly did not get anything close to what I paid for. Let them fight it out, because you can’t even talk, let alone reason, with any human being in the airline industry. My family and I decided no more travelling - it’s just not worth it. I hope the entire industry goes down the tubes, because it has clearly been taken over by most likely harvard mba types that have been educated beyond their intelligence and only care about stock price and options. Good riddance.

By: john

john — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 20:19:47 +0000

5 hours late sounds good to me if I get there safe, rather than the airline just taking off without taking all necessary precautions.

By: Kelli

Kelli — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 03:32:06 +0000

I have had a very similar experience with Alaska Airlines. We were supposed to leave San Diego at 3:00 pm for Seattle. First delay was 2 hours, second delay was another 45 minutes. They said the plane needed a part that had to be flown down from Seattle. Meanwhile, they switch our flight to another plane that now needs a pilot because the other one has timed out. They choose to DRIVE the pilot down from Los Angeles at 5:30 in the afternoon. Hello??? Can anyone say rush hour?! 30 minutes later we watched our 1st malfunctioning plane take off. We are still waiting. We finally get standby seats on a following flight and get to Seattle 5 hours after schedule.
The story is not over.
3 days later we were flying back to San Diego from Seattle. After half of the passengers boarded we were told that there was a mechanical problem and we needed to switch gates to a new plane. OK, no problem. We all board the plane, and sit. For 1 hour. There is another mechanical problem. This is finally fixed and we push back, and sit. For another 35 minutes. As they did the last walk around of the plane, they realized they must de-ice before going up to 40 thousand feet.
I will NEVER fly Alaska Airlines again. They made very poor choices and were never honest with their customers.

By: jeff

jeff — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 23:30:39 +0000

I have flown alaskan airlines I don’t know how many times. Each time I feel like I’ve been held hostage. I have indeed been held hostage because no one else flies to the locations I travel to in Alaska. They have tried to cheat me out of sky miles. They have disallowed me to board an airplane because I was, get this, 2 minutes past the check in time in Yakutat, Alaska. That is we were at the gate 43 minutes early rather than 45 minutes early. We were in line and the guys in front of us made it in the magic time but we were denied. The plane wasn’t even on the ground yet. We watched the plane land, people and gear deplane, new passengers load, their luggage was loaded and they took off. The “woman” at the counter got sick of us pointing out to her that we could’ve made it so she just left us standing there. Try finding lodging in Yakutat, a village of 600 people. My luggage has been lost, delays are very common and this airline could indeed not care if you fly them or not.

By: francois gossieaux

francois gossieaux — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:43:54 +0000

Nate - I hope that they would engage in this conversation and better yet reimburse me for my hotel night and my same-day-purchase flight to San Francisco on United.

But if the attitude of the people I dealt with was any indication of their corporate culture, somehow I doubt this will happen…

By: nate

nate — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:29:37 +0000

Francois,

Wow, that certainly takes the cake for customer abuse. I’ve yet to hear (personally) of a real situation that’s worse than what you’ve described, and I certainly don’t blame you for writing what you did.

I took the liberty of contacting Alaska Air via their contact form, mentioning your blog, and asking them to rectify the situation by at least joining in the conversation here, if nothing else.

We’ll see if they actually take that seriously and show up. I’d be happy to know if they contact you in some other manner as well.