Earning Back the Cost of Alaska’s Premium Class (Trip Report)

The day I was flying up to San Francisco, Alaska had a total of 108 flights solely-within California on 15 distinct routes. Only four of those flights were operated by mainline aircraft. There’s one roundtrip from both San Diego and Orange County to San Francisco. That’s it. So it seemed like a fun opportunity to fly mainline for the quick trip up north as my elite status quest continues. (This trip did not make me feel any better about it.)

I booked this trip using Chase Ultimate Rewards for the equivalent of $261.82 in points. I don’t generally like booking that way, but I had the points and it was a good way to do it. This, of course, shows up as a paid ticket with Alaska, but it’s one that does not show as using my Alaska credit card, so… no card benefits. I know I grabbed seats during booking, but….

The day before travel, I took a look and sure enough, I had no seats at all. Crap. How did this happen? Fortunately, there were seats available, and I was able to get an empty window way in the back. Chasing elite status sucks, because you get none of the perks while you’re doing it.

I had planned to leave my house around 11, but then… my delay streak continued with my fourth in a row. The plane broke in San Francisco and it was on a creeping delay. It finally got out of SFO about 45 minutes late and I hit the road. Meanwhile at the airport, I parked in the terminal garage, and it took only a few minutes to get through security.

The airport was buzzing on a Friday, and I decided to wander around. Other than a large, closed restaurant space, there wasn’t much exciting to see. So I wandered back and waited to board. I was called to board in the D group once again and walked all the way to the back. It was Delightful.

Alaska 642
June 6, 2025

This was an airplane with a vintage interior.

That makes it sound better than it is. It was very well worn and the seat was lacking padding.

I took my seat and began to read. We pushed back as expected and it was only a short delay before we were airborne into what was left of that morning’s marine layer.

Once in the air, we hung a right, and climbed to cruising altitude. I had somehow forgotten my noise-canceling headphones, and man, it is so loud in the back of that airplane on climb. That’s especially true in Orange County where you go hard on the throttle until you get over the rich people where you suddenly cut back.

The flight attendants came through with Biscoff, and I had a ginger ale. I love that they give you a mini can since I never want a whole can of soda, but I do like a nice cup filled with ice.

It was a nice day to fly, and I didn’t even bother to log on to the internet. I was fully focused on finishing this not-very-good book, so I could get rid of it. (If any of you were on this airplane after me, well, I left it in the seatback pocket.) We had a nice view of Monterey as we started our descent, and it was surprisingly clear around the Bay Area.

Upon landing, we had a very short taxi over to the B gates where we parked just a little over a half hour behind schedule. It was nice that we made up some time, but that half hour was enough to foil my plans to meet my friends that afternoon. Instead, I went to the hotel and just worked from there before meeting them later at the Giants’ game.

As I waited to get out of row 29, I saw a strange sight. Nobody stood up. Everyone remained seated in their own row until it was their turn to go. What a civilized bunch. It was quite nice.

While we sat, I went online to check in for the return. But every time I went to pull up the seat map to change seats on the app, it kept loading the flight I was still on. I gave up and decided I’d deal with that later. It never did let me check-in and try to change seats on the app even hours later. I don’t understand why this app is so buggy.

Once off, I hopped on the AirTrain and went to my hotel, the Grand Hyatt at SFO. Oh my god, I love this hotel. The view is amazing. There was a lovely ITA aircraft parked right next to Qatar and Zip Air waiting for its next money-losing flight. And the hotel itself is quite nice. This makes the Hyatt Regency LAX look like a complete dump. (It may not be that far from the truth.)

When I settled in at the hotel, I tried to check in again. The app was useless so I moved to the “manage reservations” process and found they wanted only $13.99 for a premium class seat with extra legroom on the return. I don’t care about legroom since I’m not tall but I figured it would be worth that price anyway just to check it out. I moved to 8A, and I had a plan to get my money’s worth.

After the Giants’ game, I came back for some late night viewing. WestJet was parked for the evening, but look at that bustling terminal. It’s such a great view.

The next morning, I left my room at the Grand Hyatt 50 minutes before departure. The train worked great but once I got off, what a mess. Regular security is downstairs but TSA Precheck is up top right where you exit the train.

I got in line and sat there. The ID checker seemed to feel it necessary to talk to everyone at length. One kid didn’t have Precheck on his boarding pass so the checker decided to be the problem solver and looked at the other people in the party to see if they had Precheck even though they had to go downstairs no matter what with the kid. It was very frustrating. By the time I made it through, it was only 30 minutes before departure.

My flight was at gate C1 which should be B1. The rest of the C gates are in that old Delta concourse but this was not. I’m not sure why it is numbered that way, especially since there is no B1 at the airport.

When I walked up to that gate, boarding had already begun and I just walked right on since I had fancy B (as in “beautiful”) group boarding with premium class. Somehow they had apparently made everyone check their bags. They even eyed my small duffel to see if it would be ok before they begrudgingly let me through. But check out that line of bags….

Alaska 642
June 7, 2025

This was another airplane that desperately needed new seating but at least I was up front and had a ton of legroom that I didn’t really care about.

Looking around, I saw this airplane was a little beat up. Here was my window.

My streak of delays was finally broken. We were ready very early and the jet bridge was pulled back several minutes before we even started moving. The safety demonstration was done before we pushed too. Once we did, well, it was a very quick taxi to the runway where we jumped up into the murk before turning around. There would be no good view of the City on this day. Here’s a 5x timelapse of our departure.

Once we hit 10,000 feet, I pulled out my laptop to do work. It would have cost $8 for wifi since T-Mobile apparently doesn’t work unless you’re on your phone. So I just worked offline.

The flight attendants were up immediately, and I had a Glenfarclas scotch. Yep, I was that guy who was drinking whisky at 10 in the morning, but in Premium, the drinks are free and I was determined to make my $13.99 back.

We leveled out and it was just one of those spectacular smooth summer days up at altitude. I kept cruising on work, and when a flight attendant came through to collect trash, I asked for another whisky. She brought it after her pass was done. That’s $19 of value right there, and all I had to do was drink before noon. I’m calling it a victory.

By the time I saw the bottom of that glass paper cup, my work was done, and I was feeling a slight buzz. I pulled out my phone and logged on to wifi for free with T-Mobile and just scrolled for awhile as we descended.

We seemed to hover above the low marine layer for awhile, before finally plunging in for final approach. I took this video timelapse of our arrival.

Finally, after four attempts on Alaska/Hawaiian, I had a flight that arrived on time… early, even. This was a really nice flight, and I was ready to head home to start the rest of the weekend. Let’s see if my on-time streak can continue next month.