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Alaska Boeing 737 (N607AS) leaves Portland, heading to Las Vegas. Photo by Russell Hill.
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New Alaska Airlines livery after landing at Portland. Photo by Russell Hill.
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New Timbers livery on Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-700 as seen today in Portland. Photo by Alaska Airlines.
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Alaska Airlines Timbers livery with a Timber. Photo by Alaska.
Click any photo for larger version.
Back in February, Alaska Airlines held a contest for customers and fans to design a special Portland Timbers (Portland’s soccer team) livery. Surprisingly my livery design did not win. I guess it makes sense since the three finalist’s liveries were a tad bit better.
The judges actually liked two of the liveries so much, they decided to do a combined livery using Paul Wright and John Bode’s designs.
“Paul and John’s winning designs came together seamlessly to create one of the most unique paint themes in our fleet,” said Joe Sprague, Alaska Airlines’ vice president of marketing. “The plane’s iconic green and yellow colors will be hard to miss from the ground or in the air.”
Today at Portland International Airport (PDX) Alaska Airlines showed off the new livery. The new paint scheme took 130 gallons of paint, 4500 sheets of sandpaper and 51,000 feet of masking tape.
The Boeing 737-700 will fly throughout Alaska’s network throughout the 2011 MLS season and will join their fleet of other special liveried aircraft.
I really love this livery. I liked both winners and this really puts them together to create a vibrant and fun livery. I cannot wait to catch this livery in person.
Updated 8:20pm: Added another photo from Alaska Airlines and two great photos of the Boeing 737 landing and taking off from PDX by Russell Hill (thanks Russell). You can check out even more photos on Alaska’s Facebook page.
Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-800 ready to go.
Sometimes when things go wrong, it is an opportunity to show what you are made of. On Saturday, Alaska Airlines computer system, used to plan flights, went offline due to a blown transformer. It took over 24 hours to get the system fully running again and there are still passengers who are trying to get to their destination.
From the media’s perspective, Alaska was on their game. During the outtage they posted four different press releases, allowing the media to update passengers. When this sort of thing happens with most other airlines, the media is lucky to get one press release after everything is said and done.
For passengers, both Alaska and Horizon effectively used their social media outlets to not only keep customers informed, but to apologize for the inconvenience. Alaska alone had about 25 tweets about the outage, either providing updates or talking directly to customers who needed assistance. Alaska Air President Brad Tilden and Horizon Air President Glenn Johnson also made a video apologizing for the delay, something that I have never seen an airline do, especially in the middle of the situation.
Now realize, this is all going on over the weekend. All these airline folks were working diligently to get the system back up and keep their customers informed. For me, that is true dedication.
Most airlines are too afraid to have such a public voice when something goes wrong. It takes a risk to be so public when things go wrong, but I think it seperates the good airlines from the great. Even though the computer crash only affected 18% of their flights, it is still a huge impact. Alaska did have to cancel 150 flights, affecting 12,000 passengers. Sure, for many passengers this outreach didn’t mean much help them feel better about not seeing grandma, but just like every other industry out there, airlines are prone to things going wrong. The airline business is extremely complicated and this just goes to show how something relatively minor can have such a large impact.
Cheers to Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air for being so open with the issues and getting them solved.
Alaska gets more kudos from Dan Webb via his blog Things in the Sky Blog and Brett Snyder on CrankyFlier.com.
Three great Alaska Airlines Timbers livery. Which is your favorite? Images from Alaska Airlines. Click for larger.
The selection process had to be rigged! Back in February, Alaska Airlines had a competition to allow people to design a new Portland Timbers livery that would fly on a Boeing 737-700. I created, what I think was a pretty rad livery and it is not one of the finalists? I smell scandal. Okay, I really didn’t submit that and the three that are the finalists are much better than mine.
Let’s have a little fun. Which of these three liveries do you like best? #1, which was designed by Paul Wright, #2 designed by John Bode or #3 which was done by Lee Zeman.
[poll id=”4″]
Don’t stress too much over the vote, since it really doesn’t matter too much. You see, Alaska has already made their decision. Alaska liked Wright and Bode’s designs so much, they are going to combine them and make one super livery.
About 500 fans submitted their livery ideas to Alaska Airlines and the winners were selected by folks from Alaska and the Portland Timbers. Zeman’s livery ended up getting second place and there were seven others with honorable mentions. Bode and Wright not only get to see their artwork fly around Alaska’s route, but also get a VIP trip to the Timbers home opener on April 14th.
After the new livery is official unveiled in early May in Portland, it will start regular service. To see the other top seven, check them out on the Timber’s website.
The Alaska Airlines livery on a Bombardier Q400 (N441QX) seen in Portland this week.Click for larger.
It is one thing to see a computer generated drawing of a new (well I guess kind of older) livery on a brand new plane versus seeing it in the flesh. Russell Hill, a photographer based in Portland, was lucky enough to catch the first Bombardier Q400 with the new Alaska Airlines livery. Although the plane was spotted in Portland, it was painted by Associated Painters in Spokane, WA.
Not too long ago, Alaska Air Group announced that the Horizon livery would be replaced by the Alaska livery on the Horizon Air Q400’s. However, the Horizon brand of service (aka free beer and wine on the plane) will stay. This is only the third aircraft type (Boeing 737 and MD-80 being the others) to see this Alaska Airlines livery.
Other than the “Horizon” looking a bit odd, I really like this livery on the Q400. I am wiling to bet we will see the “Horizon” after the “Alaska” leave after people become more aware of the change (update: I have been told there is no plan to get rid of the “Horizon” next to the “Alaska”). It is sad to see the old Horizon livery being retired, but at least it is being replaced by Alaska and not some other outside company. The plane is not assigned to any one route and you should start to see it throughout the Horizon route system.
Thanks to Russell for getting this photo and be sure to check out his second photo of the Q400 as well. You can also catch more photos on Horizon Air’s Facebook page.
The tower at Tucson's Airport on Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-900
Since Alaska Airlines and I are both based in Seattle, I end up flying them quite a bit. That, of course is not a bad thing, since I love their combination of cheap fares, high level of service and all Boeing 737 fleet (okay, I guess Q400’s now too). Recently I flew from Tucson(TUS) to Seattle (SEA) in First Class on Alaska which I haven’t been able to do in quite sometime. Oh yes, I wish I could say I am a high roller, but this First Class flight came thanks to my mom and her Alaska miles. Heck, I will still take it.
The rock star benefits of First Class start before you actually get onto the airplane. Alaska only operates one flight per day from Seattle to Tucson, so they only have one ticket counter and gate. I was actually surprised to see they had their own gate and counter, since I have seen them use Delta’s at other smaller locations. It could be because TUS seems to have more counter and gate space than needed?!
I only had a carry-on but my mom had a bag to check. If we were flying economy, that would be a $20.00 charge, but in First Class, your first two bags fly with no additional fee.
When we arrived, the line at the ticket counter was long — very long. Like 20 people deep and two people working the counter. We had 2.5 hours before the flight took off, but this is where flying First Class kicks in. The First Class and MVP line had no one in it. Sure, I feel a little bad “cutting” everyone just because I have a First Class ticket, but I sure as heck don’t want to wait in a long line.
The food was filling and good and yes I took advantage of having free drinks.
The second benefit happens at the security check point. The airport doesn’t have much traffic, so there wasn’t much of a line. Since the main line was short and we had over two hours to burn before the flight, we decided to hang out with the economy folks instead of taking the First Class line.
While everyone else lines up at the gate to board, we lined up in the First Class line. Not having to wait in line and having to not worry about overhead space is a good feeling. It is hard not to watch as others board while looking happy about being in First Class.
When I fly First Class on most other airlines they will serve you a “real” drink before takeoff, but we were only offered water. Not a huge deal; it is not that I need a little buzz before take off. Once we got in the air, the flight attendant came around and actually called passengers by name. That is right, we were called “Mr. and Mrs. Brown.” My mom made it a little awkward by pointing out we were mother and son, not cougar and boy-toy, but it just made the flight attendant laugh. I know many flight attendants are trained to call First Class passengers by name, but this is the first time I have seen it in action. It was a nice touch and takes the level of service to a whole new level.
We sat in 1D and 1F — bulkhead First Class. My mom likes this seat since she can be one of the first ones out and stretch her legs fully out. She is 5’3″ so this works for her, but I am 6’1″ so the bulkhead is actually worse for me since I can’t put my feet under the seat in front of me. Since we were in the front of the plane, I had plenty of room, but I normally try to avoid the bulkhead when sitting in economy. Plus, not having a seat back pocket to store my mini-laptop, camera and iPhone makes things a bit difficult as well. When I normally fly, I take the window seat, but my mom took dibs on the window and since her miles got me up to First Class, I didn’t complain (okay, I did a little bit — sorry mom).
We got a nice view of the Grand Canyon during flight. Who could not love flying? Thanks to my mom for taking this photo.
The meal is what you would expect in a domestic First Class seat. There was salad, ravioli and a bread stick. Real glass, silverware and plates were used. The ravioli was good — not just airline-food good, but actually, food I would pay for in a restaurant good. Even though the larger seats make for great sleeping, I always try to stay awake when I am sitting up front so I can enjoy the experience. This flight wasn’t long enough to have free digEplayers for First Class passengers, but there was Wi-Fi available for only $9.95. Since the flight was about three hours and I was flying with my mom, I decided not to get the internet.
Another bonus of sitting in the front is you get to get off first. One of the downsides of getting off first is having to wait in baggage claim for your bag. But wait! Alaska has the deal, where if your bag doesn’t get to you with-in 20 minutes of the plane arriving at the gate, you get $20 off your next flight or 2000 bonus miles. My mom was actually excited about getting bonus miles, but we had our bag with-in 14 minutes of the plane hitting the gate — very impressive.
For those of you who are missing how flying used to be, do not worry, it still exists — up in First Class. You get top notch service, meals, no fees and treated like royalty by choosing to fly First Class. Of course, all this service comes at a price and you will end up paying more — just like you used to have to pay more for economy back in the “good old days.”
