Flights for July 2024 Trip to California

July 2024, I made a trip to California climbing some mountains in Sierra Nevada. This post would be about my flights back and forth, how some last-minute changes threatened to derail my plans (but ultimately didn’t).

Overlooking Berkeley

I couldn’t find any good avatar photos for this post, so I will use this one taken before my flight back to Boston, where a friend of mine in the Berkeley area took me to Grizzly Peak Vista Point, up the hill behind Berkeley.

During my last trip to the San Francisco Bay area back in March, I discovered a friend of mine who recently moved to the area shared the common hobby of climbing rocks with me. As a result, we figured we could make a trip to the Sierra Nevada Mountains this summer.

Alaska Airlines Flight 357 from Boston to San Francisco

Ticketing

(It’s somewhat a long story for ticketing.)

We planned on leaving San Francisco Bay area on the morning of Saturday, July 20. At first, my plan was to fly Southwest, leaving Boston at 5:45am and arriving at Oakland at 11:15am, with a connection in Chicago. At 250 USD, I wouldn’t describe this flight as cheap, but it’s certainly reasonable given it’s during the peak summer season and a schedule that worked for me.

Then, three weeks before the trip, I stumbled across an American Airlines itinerary, leaving Boston at 1pm on Friday July 19, arriving in San Francisco at 7pm with a connection in Phoenix. At only 128 USD, it seemed too good to be true. (Maybe it was, as within 10 minutes of my purchase, the 128 USD fare was gone.) It’s basic economy but I had status with American Airlines, so I could still check bags and select seats for free. I could crash at my friend’s place for the night, so the only downside of this itinerary was that I had to leave on Friday, but given the much cheaper fare and not having to wake up early on Saturday morning, I gladly took it. (By the way, it seemed to me that 128 USD was American Airlines’ bottom price for transcontinental flights. Earlier in March my flight between Philadelphia and Sacramento was also 128 USD one-way.)

Then on the morning of July 19, I woke up to a message from American Airlines stating my flights were canceled. Later I learned it’s a widespread outage caused by Cloudstrike. Luckily, Southwest with its ancient IT systems dodged the bullet, so was Alaska Airlines, which used a different IT system than the big 3 carriers in the US. At that time, the earliest replacement flight American Airlines could (automatically) place me on would arrive in San Francisco on Saturday night. I did a quick search and found some open seats on Alaska Airlines Flight 357 on Friday night, Boston to San Francisco direct. This flight was codeshared as AA7459, so I figured a phone agent from American Airlines could change me onto it.
However, with Cloudstrike outage causing widespread flight disruptions, it wasn’t easy getting connected to a phone agent. I called American Airlines’ Mandarin line and was on hold for 1.5 hours. (The English line gave me a call back in 3 hours.) By the time I was connected to the phone agent, AS357 was no longer on sale on Alaska’s website. But miraculously, the phone agent said she could see availabilities on her side. A few minutes later I was booked onto AS357. In the end, the Cloudstrike outage ended up putting me onto a better flight.

(Throughout this entire episode I knew I had the Southwest flight the next morning as a backup, which took away the stress or anxiety.)

The Flight

I reached Boston Airport via MBTA’s Blue Line, after which it was a shuttle bus ride to the terminal. Somehow, the shuttle ride felt very long and crowded. I had to push my way to get off it at the terminal.
Once inside, there was a line (!) at Alaska’s Bag Drop. Even with priority, it took me 10 minutes to get my bags checked. Some of the agents seemed to be rebooking other passengers, which could explain the bag drop line.

It took me 18 minutes to clear the security screening this afternoon, after which it was less than an hour before my flight’s departure. After grabbing a takeout in the terminal, I headed towards the gate and boarding had just started.

Alaska Airlines 357
Boston, MA (BOS) – San Francisco, CA (SFO)
Boeing B737-800 (N565AS)
Seat 17F
Scheduled Departure – 6:30pm
Actual Departure – 6:54pm
Scheduled Arrival – 10:17pm
Actual Arrival – 9:44pm
5 hours and 40 minutes

Here’s GPS Tracking:

The plane that operated my flight (N565AS) was wearing Disney’s Toontown Livery, painted under a year ago. But inside, this was an 18-year-old plane, and the windows weren’t particularly clean. I took the following video of the takeoff:

Click here to display photos of the slideshow

Alaska Airlines B738 (N565AS)
My plane to San Francisco, in Disney livery.

Boarding Flight to San Francisco

Exit Row Legroom

There were few seating options left by the time I was switched onto this flight. My other option was a middle seat in Alaska’s “Premium Class”. I sure liked the legroom for this exit row seat, but unfortunately the seat back didn’t seem to recline (even though the row behind me wasn’t exit row).

Unfortunately, once airborne, I was having a stomach ache, a bit like the Washington DC – Seattle flight that I took back in 2020 (also on Alaska Airlines). I tried to catch as much rest as I could, that meant there’s not much to show along the way.

 
Sunset Glow

Flights Back

Fast forward to Sunday July 28, after spending a week exploring the Sierra Nevada Mountains, it’s time for me to head back to Boston.

Ticketing

There was some uncertainty whether I would fly directly back to Boston, or to Texas for some errands, so I booked a refundable Alaska Airlines’ flight leaving at 9pm, and landing in Boston at 5:35am. About a month before the trip, I found that American Airlines had an itinerary of SFO-JFK-BOS at 11k miles. The SFO-JFK leg would be served by their 321T with lieflat business class. I had status with American Airlines, so my plan was to take whichever flight that I could be upgraded on.
In the end, I was third on the upgrade list for the Alaska Airlines flight with one (or two) first class openings, while business class on American Airlines’ 321T were sold out. Since I was upgraded on neither flight, I chose to fly the cheaper one of the two, which was American Airlines.

The Flights

After bidding farewell to my friend(s) in the San Francisco Bay Area, I made it to San Francisco Airport at around 7pm, around 3 hours before my flight’s departure. There were some lines at the security checkpoint but it was moving relatively quickly. In the end, I cleared it in 16 minutes.

After that, I planned to check out the recently opened “The Club” lounge at San Francisco. There was a short line outside the lounge but no waiting list. Once inside, one could easily feel this was larger than the typical “The Club” lounge, possibly to accommodate the large number of PPS holders in the bay area. Food offerings (p1 below) was also better than the typical “The Club” lounge but hardly remarkable otherwise.

Click here to display photos of the slideshow

Food Offerings

Essentially, this was all the edible options at the lounge. Not impressive, but still better than most other The Club lounges. The broccoli orange chicken was a bit greasy, but nonetheless the highlight of the evening.

Food Offerings Table

Lounge Interior

Bathroom

 
Terminal Interior
One of the few fancy-looking airports in United States.

American Airlines 276
San Francisco, CA (SFO) – New York Kennedy, NY (JFK)
Airbus A321 (N111ZM)
Seat 13F
Scheduled Departure – 10:14pm
Actual Departure – 10:24pm
Scheduled Arrival – 6:59am + 1
Actual Arrival – 6:39am + 1
5 hours and 15 minutes

Here’s GPS Tracking:

The flight was mostly full in the main cabin, but luckily I got an empty middle seat next to me. Probably to counterbalance my luck, the recline button for my seat was broken. (Not just my seat, the entire plane gave me a feeling that American Airlines weren’t the most diligent in maintaining its transcon flagship 321T.)
That evening we took off from runway 1R at San Francisco, which was somewhat a novelty as the dominant runways should be the 28’s. But apart from that, it was an uneventful flight as I tried to sleep most of the way through.

Here’s a video of the landing:

Once on the ground in New York Kennedy, I had just under 2 hours before my flight to Boston. I had heard that American Airlines were losing market share in New York Kennedy to competitors, and its almost empty Terminal 8 certainly spoke to that.
After grabbing breakfast in the terminal, it’s the final short hop to Boston. It’s a 76-seater ERJ175, somehow, on a Monday morning, the plane was only half-full. As a result, my upgrade was cleared well in advance.

American Eagle ERJ175 (N439YX)
Operated by Republic Airways, my plane to Boston.

American Airlines 4376 Operated by Republic Airways
New York Kennedy, NY (JFK) – Boston, MA (BOS)
Embraer ERJ175 (N439YX)
Seat 4A
Scheduled Departure – 8:45am
Actual Departure – 9:18am
Scheduled Arrival – 10:20am
Actual Arrival – 10:15am
53 minutes

Here’s GPS tracking:

Planes in Line for Takeoff

That morning JFK only used runway 13R for takeoff, and we had planes queuing up the entire taxiway parallel to it. In the end, the taxi between gate departure and takeoff was almost as long as the flight itself.

After the previous redeye flight from San Francisco, I tried to catch some sleep on this flight. And with clouds during much of the flight, there wasn’t much to show.

Here’s a video of the landing, into a drizzly Boston.

Unfortunately, I didn’t pack any umbrellas for this trip, that meant once out of the airport, I had to brave the rain while dragging my suitcases on my way home.
END

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