Alaska 737-900ER Trip Report | Seattle - Minneapolis
Flight Details
Departure Airport: Seattle - Tacoma International Airport (SEA/KSEA) @AlaskaAirfireball111 summon
Arrival Airport: Minneapolis - Saint Paul International Airport (MSP/KMSP)
Airline: Alaska Airlines
Aircraft: Boeing 737-900ER (N283AK)
Flight Number: AS527
Flight Time: 2 hour, 49 minutes
Seat: 22A (Economy)
Server: Very Expert
There’s no better place to start an Alaska Airlines trip report than in their home city of Seattle. The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is Alaska’s largest hub, servicing 300 daily departures across the world. I haven’t flown Alaska since 2018, so I was very excited to check them out.
Our departure today was out of the D Concourse, D3 to be specific. The D gates are not the most modern - it’s not awful, but it’s certainly a bit dated. It’s quite different from the brand new part of the C concourse in which I spent most of my morning.
My ride today was N283AK, an 8.5 year old Boeing 737-900ER, seen here arriving from California’s capital city of Sacramento. The 737-900s are an extremely common sight around here in Seattle. I was hoping for a MAX 9, which is what the flight was scheduled as, but the Alaska Ops team had other plans for me. Oh well.
It was a very full flight, and there was a slight delay as they were dealing with gate checks to accommodate everyone. They made a good effort to hustle people down the jetbridge into the roasting hot plane. The first several rows are First Class, followed by 24 “Premium Class” seats. It’s the same setup but just with four inches of extra legroom. I can see the appeal on some of Alaska’s longer transcontinental flights or those to Central America from the West Coast, but for a sub-three hour flight it seems unnecessary. I snapped a picture of the regular economy seats, as seen below. This wasn’t my row but the first one that was empty enough to photograph without weirding people out.
The seats themselves are decently comfortable, pretty standard for what you’d see on an older United aircraft. Everything was very clean, which I appreciated for such a short turnaround. There were adjustable headrests and the best feature of them all - full AC power outlets. It’s always great to have a real outlet as opposed to a USB-A or USB-C charging port so you can charge whatever you want (computer, phone, e-reader, etc), though they made it abundantly clear multiple times that we were NOT allowed to charge power banks onboard for fire safety reasons.
We pushed back off the gate 5 minutes late at 1:43 PM. It was the early afternoon rush, and the taxi out to Runway 34R took a while. In very un-Pacific Northwest like fashion, it was brilliantly sunny today, making for phenomenal views taking off.
It was a little choppy as we climbed east over the mountains, so the seatbelt remained on. I connected to Alaska’s WiFi. Unfortunately, this was not one of the airline’s StarLink equipped jets. This 737-900 was still rocking the older style internet, which is not free. I had enough content downloaded and work to do, so I decided against paying $8 for streaming and instead sticking to the messaging-only service. It’s OK - pretty slow but not painfully so. There’s also access to the usual assortment of TV shows and movies. They do have a flight tracker but it’s basically useless. The icon is the size of Rhode Island, and you can’t zoom in to see any details whatsoever. The closest you can get still has Seattle and Houston in the same view.
My favorite trick as a Flighty Pro user is live tracking through messaging-only WiFi. I’m not sure how it all works from a technical standpoint, but you can use the Flighty app just as you would with WiFi full service, including live location data and current weather information at your destination airport.
I preordered Alaska’s famous fruit and cheese platter on the app a week or so in advance of my flight for around $11. It was served alongside my choice of drink (apple juice of course) and the complimentary pretzels somewhere near Spokane. It was actually very good. The selection of cheeses was solid, and surprisingly the apples and grapes were in great shape (not brown or mushy). Alaska has been moving away from single use plastics, so everything but the lid was cardboard or bamboo.
The seatbelt sign was on for the majority of the flight over Montana, as we skimmed low over some bumpy clouds. It was nothing really bad and the flight attendants could be up and about completing their service. I’ve been on flights where it’s been worse and they’ve had the seatbelt sign on, but it’s obviously at the pilot’s discretion since turbulence is kinda hard to quantify outside of a PIREP.
As we passed into North Dakota, the flight attendants did another complete round of drinks, which was impressive for a sub-three hour flight. The crew was extremely cheery and attentive throughout the entire experience.
After just over two hours in the air, it was time to begin our descent into Minneapolis. As is typical in the summertime in the Midwest, there were pop up thunderstorms all across the state. We weaved our way around the worst of them, but definitely got bounced around a little bit. It was very cool to have dark, foreboding clouds on one side of the aircraft and bright sunlight on the other.
We touched down fairly firmly onto Runway 30R, and they applied some heavy braking action to make the optimal runway exit for our gate, which is actually another runway (4/22). 4/22 is seldom used except in situations where high crosswinds on the parallel runways require it, so it’s usually relegated to taxiway duty.
I want to shout out to the flight attendants here for going far above and beyond! My sister thought she lost one of her AirPods in the seat during the flight, and the crew spent about eight minutes pouring over the row while she pinged them on the FindMy app. It turned out it had fallen into her sweatshirt, but the cabin crew were really invested and helped to tear apart the seats and search everywhere.
I would say Alaska has all in all a very solid soft and hard product. There are very few places in which they fall short (particularly in comparison to their main Seattle competitor, Delta), but the rollout of StarLink and their more modern 737 MAXs definitely help to bridge the gap. I’m excited to fly with them again this October!
Final Grade
Seat: 7/10
Food: 8.5/10
WiFi: 6/10
Crew: 11/10
Cleanliness: 9/10
Route of Flight
Source: FlightRadar24.com
