2024 comes to a close: SFO-IAD in “Premium” Economy

We’re gonna squeeze in one final flight for the blog before we call 2024 complete!  Only 4 months into the year… though I’m actually almost a month ahead of last year.  This final flight is, unfortunately, going to be a rather unexciting flight.  It’s one final transcontinental flight from San Francisco to Washington DC.  I took this flight the weekend before Christmas, and it was operated on a 737-800.  Since it was right before Christmas, the flight was sold out, and since it was a 737-800, there were only 3 rows of First Class, which meant that I did not receive a complimentary upgrade (nor had I expected to).  This is actually my first (and so far only) time not receiving a complimentary upgrade on this route on Alaska through my American status. So instead, this review will be of their extra legroom “Premium Class” experience. 

Alaska Airlines has the policy that you can only gain access to their lounge using status if that status is directly attached to your booking. I had put my American Airlines number on this flight, so I would not have been able to use the Alaska lounge at SFO. So I just went to the AA lounge and used that one instead because they don’t have the same policy. It’s weird, but here we are. I also realized while writing this that I visit the AA lounge at SFO a lot but haven’t actually properly put it into a review because I fly AA to SFO more than I fly it from SFO. I’ll fix that eventually and add a link here.

First thing to note is that Alaska does not have bulkheads separating its cabins.  Instead, it just has a divider that looks like a European-style moveable divider, but this one doesn’t look like it moves. 

There is also no divider between Premium Class and standard Economy. 

As far as extra legroom economy class goes, upon first glance, the seat looks pretty good. 

The lack of bulkhead means that you have plenty of space in front of you, but it does also mean that three people are sharing two underseat spaces.  But that’s still arguably better than having no underseat storage in a standard bulkhead arrangement.  There are no seat back TVs on any seat, so having a mismatch there is also not a concern.

Boarding was, unsurprisingly, a bit slow and chaotic. That’s not surprising for a holiday weekend in winter when people tend to (a) have more things with them and (b) be infrequent flyers.

However, once the plane was finally loaded, we pushed back and would have an on-time arrival into DC. 

Service was a bit slow to begin after takeoff, but that’s probably because I’m more used to the speed at which First Class service begins on Alaska.  I was provided with my pre-ordered chicken meal with barely a “here you go”.  It actually startled me when she just put it in front of me from behind me. 

Going into this flight, I hadn’t really noticed that there wasn’t a cabin divider on Alaska’s planes, and if I had, I don’t think I would’ve picked row 6.  On European flights, I hate sitting right behind the divider because it blocks all your view of the plane, but you don’t get the extra space of a bulkhead to alleviate that effect.  Further, I hit my head on the divider three out of the four times that I stood up during the flight, so I was not pleased at all.

Premium Class includes drinks but not meals, so I had a Coke Zero and then later an Old Fashioned. 

My pre-ordered meal was something along the lines of a Chinese five spice curry or something.  It just tasted like generic “chicken in sauce”.  It was fine and was all I needed anyway.

It wasn’t really that different from what Alaska serves on medium-haul flights in First Class.  While I appreciate that drinks are included in Premium Class, I tend not to drink much on flights unless I’m on a long flight and having an actual meal.

About 2/3 of the way into the flight, they came around and did a second service. This seemed perfectly normal to me, but I was on a (longer duration) Alaska flight recently (i.e. in April 2025), where they only did a single service, but that might have been the difference between a fully daytime flight (i.e. 1:30 pm – 9:30 pm) and a late night (7 pm – 10:30 pm) flight

It’s now later, which means it’s time for that Old Fashioned I mentioned. I had intended to order a tiny canned margarita, but apparently those are only on summer flights and/or select other flights. I was unaware how strong Old Fashioneds are, and it was not to my liking, but my understanding is that this was a perfectly normal version of the drink.

Finally, it was time to land. I was ready to be on the ground and to stop hitting my head on the divider.

In summary, this flight got the job done.  I continue to be unimpressed by those who claim that US carriers’ extra legroom seats are a separate class of service or anything when it’s the same service but drinks are free.  The ground experience at SFO was normal (3/5), no thanks to Alaska’s ground rules.  The seat on the plane was similarly fine at best (3/5).  The service on the flight was good, but unmemorable aside from me getting startled (4/5).  The meals and drinks were similarly fine (3/5), as was the IFE (3/5).  This flight was the definition of ‘fine’ and gets a 16/25.

Since this was a Christmas flight, it was not cheap.  I paid about $470 and earned around 3 400 AA miles/loyalty points, as well as around 2 300 Amex points from paying for the flight on my Platinum Card.  Overall, that means I got a return of around 19% on my spending, which I’m pleased with.