Review – Alaska Airlines Boardroom Lounge – Seattle

August 29, 2016

This entry is part 9 of 12 in the series Lounge Reviews

Seattle is home to Alaska Air and it serves as its main hub with excellent connections throughout the West Coast and Hawaii. We happened to route back through Seattle after a father-daughter trip to Disneyland.

I haven’t blogged about this or other domestic flights because they are simply not noteworthy … in fact the only thing I think when I fly domestic is “this is only slightly better than the last awful domestic flight I was on” … US and Canadian airlines really need to step up their game but I digress.

If you recall, I had the opportunity to test drive the American Express Centurion Studio in Seattle and I didn’t come away impressed. I was actually going to give them another try but after thinking about it on the plane ride over, I thought I would give the Alaska Airlines Boardroom a shot instead and I’m sure glad I did.

First, the lounge is right before Gate D1, and was strategically located near the C terminal from which we were to fly out of so that was a positive to begin with. The AMEX Studio was in Terminal B so it was further away.

While I fly in coach for domestic travel, I don’t like to give up my lounge access and if you recall, I hate paying out of pocket for benefits I can get for free. As part of my American Express Platinum included privileges, I have unlimited access to Priority Pass lounges, of which the Alaska Airlines Boardroom is one.

When entering the lounge, you are greeted with the front desk and an open high ceiling feel to the lounge.

The lounge has an upstairs and a downstairs and plenty of room to handle a lot of guests. I found that there were plenty of seats available and lots of different working options which was quite nice. In fact, as I write this, I have the tarmac just beyond the view of my laptop screen.

You might not be able to tell from the picture above but I went straight up Inception on you.

In terms of the different between the upstairs and the downstairs area, there are few differences, slightly different food options and a full fledged automatic Starbucks barista machine downstairs. The thing is actually pretty cool. I brewed a nice cup of hot chocolate for my daughter.

The upstairs area features the bar complete with a full time bartender. As I’m not a huge drinker and I am travelling with my daughter, I did not partake.

The only slight against this lounge was the lack of food choices. Downstairs there was chicken dumpling soup and upstairs there was a bean soup. While you also had crackers, veggies and dip and some salad, the choices were slim, though they did make up for it as the soup was delicious. Not enough to fill you up for your flight but not horrible either.

I don’t know if you picked up on the dark wood theme but it’s prevalent throughout the lounge and while I’m not a huge fan of the look, it does lend itself quite nicely to an executive feel.

As I had mentioned previously, there are quite a few seating options available and for those that love to look at the tarmac, the views are spectacular. I am currently passively watching a bunch of 20-somethings load bags onto a 737 while writing this blog post … I don’t know if it gets much better. If you notice, there are plugins a plenty. In fact I believe that every single seat and every single working area has access to at least one plug in, both AC and USB.

Meanwhile, my daughter, who is very well travelled, is quietly watching a show on Netflix as the wifi here is adequate enough to support it.

And what lounge isn’t complete without its own boarding pass printer … though I’m not sure how useful it is as the lounge is after security …

While it’s not the best lounge I have ever visited, the Alaska Air Boardroom is pretty damn good.

A couple of things that would really make this lounge better include more food options and showers but the quiet and decorum displayed but the people in the lounge makes it a good choice in my books. If I transit the Seattle Tacoma Airport in the future, I will choose the Boardroom as my lounge of choice … at least until the AMEX Centurion Studio expands and becomes a full fledged lounge with more room.

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Pro Tip – Know Your Benefits

Jayce

August 25, 2016

As a holder of multiple credit cards, I am typically covered when it comes to flight delay insurance, car rental insurance and extended warranties.

One of my favorite cards, the Capital One Aspire Mastercard provides me with an added benefit that most people don’t actually utilize, Price Protection.

I actually had the chance to use the benefit for the first time when I purchased my Bose Quiet Comfort 25s … which by the way are AMAZING noise cancelling heaphones, a must for those that travel. In fact, the noise cancelling technology in these headphones is almost like magic. As soon as you turn them on and play some music, it’s like you are in your own concert and the noise from the engines disappears. But I digress.

When I purchased these headphones, I did so directly from Bose and when I did so, I used my Capital One Aspire card. In truth, I chose the card because it doubles the manufacturers warranty. So rather than the original 1 year warrantly, I now had 2 years, which for electronic devices is a lifetime.

I purchased these headphones for use on my many flights as part of our Round the World vacation and wouldn’t you know it … as soon as I purchased them, they went on sale at CanadaComputers.com, an online retailer for $79 off the original price. I later found out that Bose was going to release their Quiet Comfort 35s shortly and CanadaComputers was trying to clear out their inventory.

As I was in Istanbul at the time and wouldn’t be back in Canada for another couple of weeks, I knew that the chances of Bose pricematching the sale would be slim. Then I remembered the Price Protection Insurance that Capital One offered as part of their Aspire card.

If you find a cheaper price for an item you purchased within the first 60 days, you qualify for price protection. The only caveat is that the purchase needs to be made using the Capital One Aspire card.

The process is a bit long and drawn out but in the end, you will end up with a cheque for the difference. I received that cheque yesterday and it is now in my bank account.

As far as the process goes, here’s what you need to do:

Call Capital One and ask to take advantage of the Price Match Guarantee
Capital One will transfer you to their insurance provider and you will provide them with some information including:
1. Original price of the item
2. Sale price of the item
3. Date of purchase
4. Price difference between the original price and the sale price
5. Other personal identification information
Once you complete the first two steps, you are sent a form via email to complete
You are required to fill out the form and the information required is pretty much what you provided in Step 2
You need to mail the completed form along with proof of the sale to the insurance provider

After 4-6 weeks, you will receive a cheque in the mail for the price difference, in my instance, I recieved a cheque for $79.

Some of the things that you want to ensure you have as part of your proof of sale include:

Sale price
Date the sale is valid for

As my screenshots did not show the dates of sale, I did provide a URL to the forum that was discussing the sale which verified that the sale occurred within my 60 day protection period.

While this process is not as simple as taking your receipt in for a price match, it provides you with another avenue to ensure you are getting the best price for your item.

Aside from the extreme flexibility I enjoy with Capital One points, the added insurance provides excellent additional value but it’s incumbent on you to ensure that you know your benefits so make sure you read the fine print.

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Review – Centurion Studio – Seattle

Jayce

August 17, 2016

This entry is part 8 of 12 in the series Lounge Reviews

As part of my Jet Blue Mileage Run, I had a 7 hour layover in the SEATAC airport in Seattle. Normally, I would have dreaded spending 7 hours in an airport but I was actually looking forward to trying out the Centurion Studio as it would be my first opportunity to use one of the AMEX Centurion Lounges. Technically, the Seattle lounge is referred to as a studio as it has the smallest footprint of all the AMEX lounges. With that small footprint comes many reports of overcrowding and even reports of people being turned away.

When I arrived at the studio, I was greeted by the front desk clerk who took my boarding pass, AMEX Platinum card and a piece of picture ID. It seems that they take the access to the lounge pretty seriously as this was the most effort I have ever had to go through to access a lounge. From there, I was asked to wait on the couches as the lounge was currently full. I was told that the wait time was going to be less than 5 minutes and it turned out to be true. Once a seat opened up, I was led by the gentleman in charge of seating to an area where there were 4 sofa type seats arranged around a small table. While I was grateful for the seat, I really felt like I was in the middle of someone’s private area.

I asked to be moved to an area where I could work and was directed to another corner seat that had opened up. Once I moved there I saw another gentleman vacate a more comfortable seat and moved over to take that seat. That’s when the gentleman that seated me came over and admonished me for taking over the seat as it was intended for a couple that had just come in. He somewhat politely asked me to vacate my seat and move back to my previous seat. Based on that interaction, it really felt like I had to ask permission to move to other areas of the lounge … something that I had not experienced before. I actually felt like I was in grade school again and needed permission to get up.

In terms of the food, it was actually very disappointing. There was nothing but cookies, desserts and veggies. Nothing there was hot and the selection was quited limited.

If I’m being honest, none of the food was all that appetizing. In fact, I left the lounge to get some proper food at the food court. Now that’s saying something. If you have a patron leave your lounge to get food at the food court, you’re doing it wrong.

In terms of drinks, AMEX has wait staff taking orders for beer, wine and a couple of cocktails … so no access to self-serve alcohol that I could see. You also have access to the standard Coke, Sprite, Ginger Ale, etc. One of the things that Centurion Lounges do is to bring a taste of the city to the lounge and the Seattle Centurion Studio decided to do that through Jones Soda. Now don’t get me wrong, I used to love Jones Soda when I was younger and I was actually looking forward to the nostalgia but I was disappointed once again as they only had 2 flavors … orange and cream soda. Once again … not impressive.

In terms of a design esthetic, it’s quite a nice looking lounge but there are far too many things working against it for me to recommend it to anyone.

I will actually be back in Seattle for a 4 hour layover in a week’s time so I will see if anything has changed. If not, I will be sure to try out Alaska Airline’s Board Room Lounges. I will also have the opportunity to try out the newest AMEX Centurion Lounge in Houston in November … hopefully that won’t disappoint as I am bringing a couple of friends along for the ride.

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JetBlue Mileage Run – How It All Shook Out

Jayce

August 12, 2016

Today was the day that all my planning would be put to the test. Today was the day that I attempted to complete my JetBlue challenge in order to garner 75,000 TrueBlue Points.

As a reminder, here is what my itinerary looked like:

As you can see, the turn in Seattle was a very short one. Luckily through my research, I found that Seattle was one of the best of the major airports in all of North America to connect in. While I asked many people through forums whether a 50 minute (in reality a 43 minute) turn would be too quick. Most said that a minimum connection time they would chance would be 25 minutes, so I had a whole 25 minute buffer.

If I’m speaking the truth, that 25 minute buffer was a little too tight for my liking and here’s why:

A 25 minute buffer is something that can very easily and very quickly get eaten up by weather delays, mechanical issues … heck … if an elite Alaska Airlines status member was running late and had already checked in, they might even hold the flight for him. In any case, there were so many different things that could go wrong that I didn’t want to think too hard about it.
My tickets were on two different airlines and were booked separately as Alaskan and JetBlue do not share an alliance nor are they partners. This mean that if I missed my connection, JetBlue would have no legal requirement to protect me on a later flight (of which there were none … unless I wanted to overnight in Seattle or Long Beach … I didn’t).
While I hold a lot of credit cards that afford me protection and reimbursements on delayed flights, I do not believe that I would have been covered due to the tight connection times. When using ExpertFlyer, I determined the minimum connection time for an international to domestic connection at SEA was 1.5 hours … I was not even close to being compliant to those times. Long story short, I wasn’t too hopeful of getting any money back if I missed my connection.

So what could I do to help me understand and de-risk my connection?

Well in truth, not much, though there were certain steps that I took to make sure that I at least knew what I was dealing with. The first thing I did was to check FlightAware to see what the historical on-time performance of the route was:

With the flight scheduled to arrive at 6:20AM PDT, I could see that historically, the flight is often delayed but not too badly. Only one of the days listed above had an arrival after 7:00AM. According to my boarding pass, the connecting flight (JetBlue 1207) had its doors closing at 7:20AM so in my mind, if I could get out of the gate, I could sprint almost anywhere in the SEA airport in 20 minutes.

Using ExpertFlyer and Google, I was able to determine that the incoming Alaska Airlines flight would land at the A terminal and the JetBlue flight would depart out of the C terminal. Armed with this information, I knew that I needed a couple of things:

I needed to be light on my feet, which meant no luggage and a personal carry-on that I could run with if needed to. Because this was a 1 day trip, I didn’t need a change of clothes, only entertainment and my trusty laptop so I could blog about the experience. As I ONLY travel with carry-on anyways, this was no stretch at all.
I needed to be near the front of the plane so that in the event I needed to sprint, I wouldn’t have to wait for a bunch of people to disembark first. This might be a problem as I was scheduled to sit in the middle of the plane in seat 13E …

Being stuck behind a bunch of people just wouldn’t do, so what’s a guy to do? Well it looked like there were some preferred seats available up front but I absolutely detest paying for seating assignments. So what’s the next best thing?

This next part is why I love the game. You continually learn. After much research, I found out that Alaska blocks a BUNCH of seats for handicapped flyers and families that need to sit together. In fact, Rows 5-8 are blocked for this purpose. Those seats are denoted in blue with an X through them.

Knowing this, I knew that those seats would be opened up once check-in opens (24 hours before the flight). So I set my alarm to make sure I was among the first to check in … and here’s what the seat map looks like after they open up availability:

See the occupied seat in 3D? That’s me! Turns out the “preferred” seats are actually handicapped seats that they open up 24 hours prior to the flight. The only warning they provide is that you may be asked to vacate the seat if someone with a disability requires it. Fair enough.

Now that I was confirmed at the front of the plane, I knew I had a fighting chance. After studying the terminal map, I was confident that I knew where I was going so I could really just put my head down and run if I needed to.

The weather report for Calgary at flight time was scheduled to be clear with a 20% chance of precipitation. All signs were pointing to success.

So how did it all turn out?

Well it was as uneventful as one could hope … in fact I don’t have much of story except that I completed my mileage run with no stress at all. Flights were on time, terminals were easy to navigate … all the prep wasn’t really needed but would I do it any other way? Not a chance.

Learning how things work in this crazy game we play is really a big part of the fun. The trips themselves are just the payoff.

Now all I have to do is wait for my TrueBlue points to post to my account!

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