Weeks ago I did seat upgrades on my return flights on Air Canada. Exit row with additional legroom. I never did pick seats on my Alaska flights to Anchorage. I was watching videos and a guy was showing how much legroom the standard Alaska seat has saying it’s one of the best among the airlines.

I never decided on an upgrade or not. I should’ve picked a standard seat and then I could go back and upgrade later. Well last night when I checked in my flight from Seattle to Alaska only had one seat left that wasn’t a middle seat. One aisle seat. I snagged it. I can’t believe how close I was to getting stuck in a middle seat for four hours!

For Seattle I just grabbed a standard seat last night. There were upgrade options to exit row for $48 or premium class for $53. Prices increased $10 overnight but I went ahead and moved to premium on the first flight. That flight to Anchorage only has two seats available now. I’m glad I grabbed that aisle seat last night. It would’ve been gone by now. I guess I’ll be able to compare First, Premium, and Standard class on Alaska after this one since I flew first class with them last year.

I am parked and getting on the shuttle to the airport.

The shuttle driver dropped me at the wrong gate. I even verified to her that I needed Alaska and she drove me down further. She dropped me off at E5 and there’s no Alaska. The United lady told me I have to go out and down to E27. Fortunately I was skeptical and went inside at the first opportunity which was around E15 and there was Alaska.

My bag is under the 50 pound weight limit.

It’s a mess just to get to the security checkpoint.

It says it’s a two minute walk to the next checkpoint and an eight minute wait there. If I can get through this, I’ll go for it. I bet this is an hour wait here.

This is much better.

Bags in front of me were getting flagged so that slowed the process down. It took 15 minutes total. A lot better than what was down the hall for sure.

Usually the Dunkin’ line is bad and I walk down to Chick-Fil-A a which is worse. This isn’t bad today.

That wasn’t a bad wait at all. Even the hot food came out fast.

I found a seating area next to my gate. I love the vanilla cream donuts.

I also got a combo.

That’s my plane. It looks like we’re running behind because boarding was supposed to start at 5:20, the sign says 5:21, and it’s 5:22 now.

I’m usually an aisle seat booker.  Except when I upgrade to the front row on Spirit since it’s so spacious. I booked a window twice on this trip. Once now because flying over downtown Seattle is cool. Hopefully we land the same way we did last time. And on my second return flight so hopefully I can sleep against the window. The aisle to Barcelona didn’t work. I kept getting bumped.

And we’re boarding. 35 minutes late.

It looks good. I don’t know if the standard seats have these plugs or not. 

The leg room looks good. We’ll see what it’s like in a standard seat on the next flight.

I noticed my flight changed from 6 to 6:15. And we’re now arriving at 8:17 instead of 8. The problem is it’s 6:25 and we’re still boarding. They’re going to bump this arrival back to at least 8:30. My connection leaves at 9:20.

Boarding complete.

They’re checking the runway for FOD. I believe that’s foreign object debris. It’s to make sure there’s nothing that can get sucked into the engines.

The captain said any second now. But that was five minutes ago.

He better not go before us. We’ve been sitting here 20 minutes. He just got here.

 

They have free inflight entertainment or $8 WiFi. The inflight has a lot of newish movies. Movies that were in the theaters in the spring like John Wick 4 and Avatar. 

I switched to TV. This will work.

They have four episodes of Below Deck sailing yacht season 2 and five episodes of Below Deck Mediterranean season 7. No commercials. 43 minutes each. I watched three episodes of sailing yacht.

For snacks we’ve got pretzels and cookies.

Alcoholic beverages are included with the seat upgrade I purchased. I ordered a Bloody Mary.

That included a “do it yourself” bloody mary kit featuring a cup or ice, Tito’s, Zing Zang, and a lime packet. No Tabasco.

Here are the Wi-Fi options.

8:30 update.

9:30 update.

We did not get the good city view this time.

It looks like my flight boards at 9:20 and leaves at 10. That’s enough time for me but will my bag make it?

Do your stuff!

The app says I’m leaving out of gate C11.

what the?

I have to go to another terminal.

I’m sure there’s a reason they did this but it makes no sense to an ordinary everyday traveler.

The good news is once I came off the train and up the escalator, I was right at my gate.

They made an announcement that this flight is full and overhead storage will be full. They asked for volunteers to check their rolling luggage. Finally they said if you’re in boarding group E or F just bring it up there because you’re the ones. They needed 8 bags checked.

What a mess that was.

I decided to wait until the line died down to almost nothing. I have an aisle seat so I’d rather not have to get up for others in my row anyway.

Of course I waited all that time and nobody is in the middle seat. I sit down, she was right behind me.

There’s still plenty of legroom here for me. I definitely had more on the last one though.

We still have outlets in the standard seats.

All of the Wi-Fi and TV/Movie options were the same. Actually I went back to the show I was watching and it remembered where I left off on the last flight.

For lunch I had a cookie and a fun size diet coke. No pretzels this time. I wonder if I got those because I was premium or if I got those because that was a 4-hour flight and this one is just a 3 1/2 hour flight? Anyway no pretzels this time. They were on the cart. I saw them. But none were handed out that I’m aware of.

We do get pretzels. They just split it up this time and gave me another half a Diet Coke.

No cool pictures of videos from that flight because I was in an aisle seat and only had a view of…the aisle.

This is Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage.

This is Ted Stevens.

Here we go.

I got it. And look they got that Barcelona dent out.

I think I’ll go Lyft.

It’s 60’s and rainy but that’s fine by me. Back home it’s 100’s and I haven’t seen rain in a couple months. There is a bit of a trick to this Uber/Lyft. They only pick up on the second level. It says stand by door one. But you have to go to door one on the second level. 

We’ll pick it up next time at my AirBnB.