Yesterday, I experienced my first Alaska Air flight from Sacramento to Kona in Hawaii. Until recently, no airlines from Sacramento flew directly to Kona. We used to have to fly Hawaiian Airlines to Honolulu and hang out there for several hours to catch a 45-minute connecting flight to Kona. Which meant travel time from Sacramento to Kona was about 8 hours minimum.
Well, not only does Alaska fly non-stop (direct), but it advertises its time at 5 hours, and we made the trip in 4 hours; blew my mind.
However, its First Class service leaves much to be desired. Here are my observations in no particular order:
- The seats have one button that makes them recline. There is no foot-rest, no multiple settings for comfort.
- The inflight magazine totally sucks and presents no Hawaiian flavor.
- There is no Henry Kapono dressed in white and playing a white guitar while standing in the waves on the beach, in fact, no video at all.
- The bulkhead is adorned in a woolly Alaska blanket and there are no hibiscus or Hawaiian flavors, which makes the First Class cabin seem cold and isolated, much like Alaska.
- We were not offered a Mai Tai or any other kind of beverage upon boarding. Instead, our between-seat console held a small (not even a full size) bottle of water.
- There were no blankets and no pillow.
- Our tray tables were small and did not contain a connection to hold an iPad like Hawaiian.
- The headphones were not the comfy pillowy type that cover your ears, but instead we were handed disposable earplugs, which provided inferior sound and were uncomfortable to boot.
- There were no tablecloths to cover the ugly metal of our tray table.
- In fact, when dinner was served, we were handed a tray without embellishments, no separate salt and pepper shakers, and it made me feel like I was dining at a high school cafeteria.
- The Diet Coke did not arrive in a can accompanied by a glass filled with ice; instead, I was served a Diet Coke in a small glass with ice -- just like I had been sitting in Coach.
- Dessert was served with our meal instead of as a separate course.
- And most egregious of all, there were zero macadamia nuts.
But despite all of these horrors, we made it to Kona in 4 hours from Sacramento.
With that, I give you my partner's personal blog about a few wild things that recently happened while selling probates at this link (and there is no connection between my story about flying First Class on Alaska vs. Hawaiian Airlines and this blog link on my personal website, which I realize can confuse people, but you get choices when you read my blog):
A Fixer Home Selling AS IS in a Probate Process.
Elizabeth Weintraub is co-partner of Weintraub & Wallace Team of Top Producing Realtors, an author, home buying expert at The Balance, a Land Park resident, and a veteran real estate agent who specializes in older, classic homes in Land Park, Curtis Park, Midtown, Carmichael and East Sacramento, as well as tract homes in Elk Grove, Natomas, Roseville and Lincoln. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put our combined 80 years of real estate experience to work for you. Broker-Associate at RE/MAX Gold. DRE License # 00697006.
Photo: Unless otherwise noted in this blog, the photo is copyrighted by Big Stock Photo and used with permission.The views expressed herein are Weintraub's personal views and do not reflect the views of RE/MAX Gold. Disclaimer: If this post contains a listing, information is deemed reliable as of the date it was written. After that date, the listing may be sold, listed by another brokerage, canceled, pending or taken temporarily off the market, and the price could change without notice; it could blow up, explode or vanish. To find out the present status of any listing, please go to elizabethweintraub.com.
