Every year, I try to gather with a group of friends from grad school. We usually do it in Vegas, but I drive so you wouldn’t read about it here. But this time we opted for something quieter, a trip up to Napa, and then meant hopping on an airplane as my quest for Alaska status continues.

We had to choose whether to fly Long Beach to Oakland and have the longer drive on that end or LAX to Santa Rosa and do the longer slog up front. It was more expensive, but in the end, we chose Santa Rosa to make life easier especially on the Sunday return. That may not have been the wise choice.

I went on to CheapAirportParking.org as usual and this time found the Airport Center Express lot to be the best bet. I won’t do that again.

After dropping our pup off at 7:30am, we began the crawl north. We got to the garage at a little after 8am which meant we’d be fine… or not. First, we had to go all the way to the roof to find a spot which wasn’t a problem until we decided after a long wait that the elevator probably wasn’t working. After coming down 7 floors via the stairs, we waited for a shuttle for probably about 10 minutes. Once we got on, the shuttle then stopped at the Embassy Suites and then again at the Residence Inn. It was a full house, and we were now a little nervous on timing.

We pulled into Terminal 6 around 8:50am after all the stops and traffic slowed us down. Fortunately, there was just a small line at TSA Precheck, so we were able to exhale and head to the gate.

We were at gate 65B which is a newly-renovated one, if I remember right. I’ve flown out of this gate before, and it looks different now. It still doesn’t have much seating, which is why it’s a great gate for a 76-seater. This flight was booked before I had the Alaska credit card, so again, we were in group D, which I believe was announced as D for Delicious.

It seemed like half the plane had already boarded while the other half stood around waiting to be called. And that half had an absurd number on carry-ons. I saw at least a couple people with 4 bags that were hiding them stacked under coats. There weren’t a lot of people in the D group, so we had no problem snaking through the crowd.

Alaska 3183 (operated by SkyWest)
May 2, 2025

The plane had come in a little late so they posted an 11 minute delay, but we were buttoned up and ready to go in the cabin nearly on time. The captain said it would be 5 to 10 minutes before we were ready, and then, we sat. At least I had a view of the newly-relocated Hawaiian 787 next to us.

There was a lot of alley traffic. I’m not sure what was going on but the American flight to Līhuʻe appeared to be sitting in the alley forever. Then JetBlue had its turn. Finally, much later than expected, we pushed back.

To make things more fun, we had to taxi over to the north runway complex for departure, so we had a tour of the airport. The new narrowbody extension on the Midfield Satellite Concourse is coming along nicely.

Finally, we got in the air on a gloomy day in LA and climbed through the marine layer before hanging a right and heading north.

It was a weird group onboard this plane. They seemed incapable of obeying the seatbelt sign. People kept getting up throughout the climb and nobody yelled at them. This wasn’t just an “I have to go to the bathroom” moment. People were just walking around and talking to each other. One lady a couple rows up kept standing up, putting her coat on, sitting down, standing up, taking it off…. Weird.

I had hoped to get a little work done on this flight. And I do mean “little” since these airplanes do not have fast wifi. But it turned out that this airplane had no wifi at all. I initially could connect to the network, but it never pulled up the login screen. I tried a couple times, and then the network disappeared completely. I hadn’t taken my book out of my carry-on bag, so I had nothing to do but stare out the window… not that this is a bad thing.

We were just shy of 40 minutes into the flight before the flight attendants got to my row to sling drinks. I just had some water and a Biscoff since I knew descent would be imminent.

We began coming down over the Bay Area, and I had a stunning view. Unfortunately some clouds concealed key parts of the Bay, but I was still able to marvel at what was below us. I took a video sped up 5x starting at Moffett Field and going to the Golden Gate Bridge.

The pilots had told us it would be just about an hour flat in the air, but it went a fair bit longer than that. We did have to circle to land from the north, so maybe the runways changed. But with the delay, I was cutting it closer and closer to an 11:30am meeting I had to take in the airport.

On the ground, the flight attendants announced that we would be deplaning from a jet bridge. Say what now? As we parked, they changed their tune and said it would be a ramp. Ok, that’s what I thought.

Everyone got off and walked toward the terminal. I was paying no attention, just hoping to get to the open air restaurant where I could sit down and log on. I got there with no time to spare, though the wifi didn’t work so I took it on 5G and hoped for the best.

After the call, we had to walk back to the baggage claim area where the rental car desks were. There is no Emerald Aisle here, so they handed us keys and we walked right across the street to where the cars were parked. Then we were on our way.

This was my first time in Calistoga, and I really enjoyed it. It’s quieter up there, and it’s at the north end of the valley so it feels hillier next to the small town’s main street. We stayed at the Calistoga Motor Lodge which is a Hyatt (former Joie de Vivre).

But after two nights, we had to head home. This return was booked as an American codeshare so I braced myself for online check-in to fail like last time. Miraculously, it did not. I couldn’t actually select check-in from the reservation on the app, but when I punched in the Alaska confirmation number, it worked.

Then I found the plane was running late, so we would again be delayed. Ugh. After dumping the car in the rental car return lot and dropping the keys, we waved to Snoopy and walked right in. This time I was able to take notice of the new terminal area which wasn’t here the last time I flew through. The old tent that held gates is still there, but it’s now just a few extra gates beyond the bigger terminal building.

Once we got through security, we took a seat and waited to board in the main terminal area. It was plenty big.

This time, for some reason, we were in Group E. When they finally called us, we hopped on and hoped for the best with carry-ons.

Alaska 3478 (operated by SkyWest)
May 4, 2025

The flight attendant working the front cabin was a breath of fresh air. As we got on, she told everyone to just find the first overhead bin with room and put their bags there because it was starting to fill up. She saw mine, and I asked if I could put it in First Class where they have those tiny bins that fit nothing. I had a duffel bag, and she said if it fit, I should do it because they had fully boarded. Sure enough, it worked.

Back at the seat, I plopped myself down and once again found misaligned windows. There really is no good option on this airplane.

It took awhile to push back, but once we did we headed right for the runway… where I heard the engines spool down. Uh oh. Apparently we had been given an ATC hold of about 15 minutes due to weather in LA, so we had to sit. Weather? I didn’t remember seeing anything about weather problems in the forecast, so now I was curious.

We did get released as expected and took off to the north before making a tight circle back toward the southeast for our journey home. We hit some bumps on the climb, but it smoothed out and my guess that we would fly off the coast was right. I again had some incredible views of the City, and this time there were no clouds to obscure it.

The flight attendants came through much more quickly this time, and this time they handed out boxes of water. But no Biscoff this time, we had honey mustard pretzels that I saved for the kids.

Wifi technically worked, and I used my T-Mobile free hours, but it was largely useless. I hoped to stream audio on the Diamondbacks game, but that worked for just a couple minutes. Then it died, and I could barely even get the moving map to load.

When the descent began, I could see what has happening. There were some storms further inland, but the coast was blanketed with a very thick marine layer. Hello, May Gray.

We plunged into the murk and hung out for awhile. I could feel us turning back around to the west to land, but I couldn’t see anything. Eventually, we did break out, but the ceiling was pretty low. I’m sure this was the reason for the delay.

After landing, we taxied around the airport until we got to our gate. This time, we hopped on the Sonesta bus which was faster and dropped us off back at the garage. Even the elevator to the top deck worked, so it was an easy end to the trip, but I’m not sure that Santa Rosa made our lives any easier. I probably should have stuck with Long Beach and flown Southwest, but… the quest for status continues and I don’t know why I do this to myself.