So I recently had some questions and posited some opinions in the Alaska vs. Delta frenemies shuffle that’s been going on the last few months – and I got some stuff wrong. But not only that, I got some prognostication wrong as well. So now I’m here to hopefully fix all that.
First thing is, Alaska has a good presence of people, all wearing Alaska clothing and manning the D8 gate at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. But just because they’re in Alaska clothing doesn’t mean anything. I talked to one of the people that seemed to be in charge there as we were boarding the ATL-PDX flight, and she said that besides her, everyone else was outsourced. They may look like Alaska employees, but they gate people are just as outsourced as the people handing the ground operations (tug, pushback, etc). Well that sucks!
Not only that, but Alaska just recently announced that they are going to nix the Atlanta to Portland routes – I’m assuming because of load factor issues. I normally travel on busier days – days where business travelers are out in full force (Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays), and the plane seems to be mostly full. But I’ve taken the flight on a Tuesday where there are a good 50 empty seats in the back of the plane – not good if you want to keep a route profitable. And obviously the route isn’t because Alaska just announced – in the small print when they said they were going to add SEA->BWI and SEA->ABQ to the route map – that they were discontinuing four city pairs, including ATL->PDX.
SUCKS!
Okay, so maybe it doesn’t suck for you. But as someone who is on PDX->ATL on an almost weekly basis, it’s really going to suck for me. At least I think it’s going to suck; the Atlanta employee said that they were lobbying to try and keep the flight. I hope Alaska at least keeps the dual round trip frequency in Atlanta, even if they don’t keep it from Portland (the previous frequency was two round trips daily, one morning flight and one redeye). Whatever the case, I’m going to have to start looking for more options when it comes to my weekly travel.
So there we have it. A bit mea culpa from me. But then again, if you’re relying on me to be the standard bearer of news, I’ll be laughing over in the corner. ::grin:: I’m not bad – I just write that way.