The Details

• Flight: AS1011
• Aircraft: A320
• Class: Main Cabin
• Seat: 30D and 30E
• Route: Chicago O’Hare International (ORD)-Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA)
• Distance: 1,713 miles
• Duration: 4hrs 48min
• Departure: 9:06AM
• Arrival:11:24AM

The Preflight

Using my Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit card companion pass, I booked this trip for my SO and I for a weekend getaway.

Alaska Airlines departs from Terminal 3 at O’Hare which is American Airlines’ main terminal. The two carriers still share some reciprocal lounge access despite scaling back their partnership over the years. My SO and I were able to access the Concourse G Admirals Club with our AS boarding passes.

We had some great views of the taxiway with the early morning American departure bank.

With 10 minutes to go until boarding at 7:25AM, we made our way to gate G6. Our A320, registration N847VA, was delivered to Virgin America back in 2011. She was formally transferred to Alaska Airlines in Nov 2018 after the merger.

Boarding began promptly. However, during the boarding process apparently the jet bridge struck the fuselage of the plane and maintenance was called to clear our flight. We were delayed for about 30 minutes at the gate.

Alaska Airlines was running a promotion with Starbucks the weekend of our flight. Anyone with a Starbucks cup was given priority boarding after Group B. My SO loves the Christmas cups and we got our cups before the flight. We were the only ones on this flight to use this perk… Happy Holidays!

The Flight

Since the acquisition of Virgin America in 2016, Alaska Airlines has been retrofitting all of the ex-Virgin America Airbus aircraft to better harmonize the fleet. The old Virgin America A320s had 8 First, 12 Premium, and 129 economy seats while the retrofitted A320s have 12 First, 24 Premium, and 114 economy seats.

All retrofitted Alaska Airlines A320s also feature the new slimline seats designed by Recaro. Seats offer 31-32″ of pitch and 17″ of width. The seat itself was comfortable enough, just right for a sub-5-hour flight.

Alaska decided to rip out all of the seat-back entertainment screens Virgin America used to have in economy and install tablet holders instead. There was a USB port for charging the personal devices.

At knee level just below the tray table was a 110V AC power outlet . It was nice to have two separate areas for charging electronics.

My Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e fit snugly into the tablet holder. Even with some moderate turbulence the tablet felt secure.

Flight attendants began service 15 minutes after takeoff by offering cups of water.

They then came through with the beverage service and I had a strong cup of black coffee with my Biscoff cookie. I find that the coffee aboard AS is much better than other legacy US carriers, both strong and flavorful.

The flight attendants came through the cabin twice more later in the flight offering water both times.

I managed to finish all of Avengers: Endgame from Alaska’s inflight entertainment streaming service through GoGo. There was actually a decent amount of newer movies and TV shows available.

We made up some time in the air and landed only 15 minutes late. There was short 10 minute taxi to the gate. Of course the weather was overcast and rainy the entire weekend we were in Seattle…

Overall, this was a perfectly economical flight from ORD-SEA for a quick weekend trip. My seat was comfortable, our flight wasn’t too delayed, and the coffee was strong.