A Bumpy Start to My Alaska Elite Status Journey (Trip Report)

I received an invite to a United event at SFO, and my curiosity was piqued. It was advertised this way: “Join CEO Scott Kirby to hear about United’s growth plans at San Francisco International Airport.” Ok, and this was close enough to home that I could do an easy day trip. So I did… but in the end, nothing was announced at all. This was really an employee rally more than anything, though it was interesting to observe. Besides, I did get some good quality time with a couple execs, and of course, I have a trip report that I’m going to break into two parts.

This trip report, however, has nothing to do with United, because I didn’t actually fly the airline. I had a credit on American that required travel to be completed just a couple days after this trip, so that covered the cost of my flight up. But on the return… I went with Frontier. I’ll talk more about that one in the next post. Today, let’s talk about my inaugural flight toward elite status on Alaska.

This experience was underwhelming… but not because of the flight itself. The problems began the day before when I went to check in. The trip was prominently displayed on the app, but I could not find a link to check in. This may very well have been because it was booked as an American codeshare, but I still had to check in before getting to the airport. After all, this is the airline that’s removing kiosks, right?

I gave up and checked in on my computer where it gave a QR code to send to a mobile device. I did that aaaaand it just took me to a generic screen to check in. When I filled out the info, it said the boarding pass was not available because I was already checked in. What on earth? I gave up and went old school, printing the boarding pass out. That worked, but it would not have if I had to check in away from home and didn’t have access to a printer. There’s something buggy with that app, at least, I’m guessing, in regards to American codeshares. Unfortunately, I have a couple more of those coming up.

I left my house an hour and a half before departure, and it took 30 minutes to get down to John Wayne. Then, I made a rookie mistake. I followed the signs to parking which went to the upper roadway, and it was complete gridlock.

It took several minutes to push through the slog before I pulled into the garage, wondering if I had somehow stumbled on a mini-LAX. Little did I know that the arrivals level was completely empty and would have been a better plan. I’ll remember that for next time.

I walked in to see the TSA line looking pretty long, but then I realized that it was some giant school group, and they did not have TSA Precheck. Once I got around them, I could see that Precheck was empty. I apparently set off the random alert on the metal detector. The guy working couldn’t find anyone to check me, so he just told me to go through the full body scanner that the non-Precheck people use. I did, and it saw something at the bottom of my leg. There was nothing there other than pants and socks, but eventually someone was able to frisk me down there.

Past that gauntlet, I walked to the gate and took a seat. It’s nice when you’re on a 76-seater, because the gate area is not full despite the flight being packed.

The sun slowly rose as the gate agent began calling up boarding groups. That’s when I realized that I was not in group C even though I have an Alaska credit card. I was in group E. Now, to be fair, I did not care. I didn’t have anything other than a laptop bag, so boarding early was not something that mattered to me. But the credit card perk is supposed to give you early boarding. I looked after the fact and saw this:

Primary cardholders, authorized users and joint cardholders of the Card who have an open account at the time of travel and up to 6 guests traveling on the same reservation are eligible for priority boarding when their tickets are purchased with their Card to qualify for this benefit. Priority boarding is only available on flights marketed by Alaska Airlines and operated by Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air, or SkyWest.

I used a credit, so obviously the card couldn’t be used to pay for it. And this flight was marketed by American, so does that mean it wouldn’t have counted anyway? It’s not entirely clear, but it is more annoying than when I had the American card long ago and that was tied to my AAdvantage number. I got pre-boarding every time.

I waited until the agent called for “E as in egg salad” to board and then headed down the jet bridge.

Alaska 3251 (operated by SkyWest)
April 2, 2025

There wasn’t much to say about the airplane itself. It looked like you’d expect an E-175 to look. I slowly made my way back to my seat, and then I stopped. Oh man, misaligned window. What a bummer.

I took my seat, noted that the legroom was pretty good, and then I put on headphones and started reading my book. We did the usual, thrilling John Wayne takeoff. The pilots sat on the brakes and spooled up the engines before launching us forward. Then we leapt into the sky and quickly settled down to avoid creating too much noise for the rich people below.

It was a little squirrelly on the climb, but it settled nicely as we passed over Catalina in the morning light. I love this photo. You can see the Airport in the Sky on the right with Avalon at the far left.

The flight attendants came through with drinks — I just had water — and a pack of Biscoff.

We descended into SFO on a mostly clear day and landed on runway 28L. After a short taxi over to the gate, I hopped off the airplane and got my first look at the new B concourse in Terminal 1.

It’s a beautiful space with a lot of light and plenty of vendors. It’s a far cry from the last time I was there, which I think was on a Southwest flight from the old, dark gates. I would have liked to check it out more, but I had no time to dawdle. I headed out to the United event.

I’ll be back with my Frontier return next time.