I looked back through my flight logs for this year, and I found an interesting pattern of a lot of premium transcontinental flights crammed early in the year, followed by a lot of regular (i.e. non-premium) transcontinental flights in the middle of the year, and then a lot of British Airways flights in the Fall (i.e. the big India trip I’m working through now). I realized that I hadn’t gotten back around to one final standard transcontinental flight that I need to post. This flight is IAD to SFO on Alaska Airlines!
The good news about this flight is that I cleared a free upgrade! This upgrade means that in 2025, I cleared upgrades on 6 out of 7 of my flights between SFO and IAD. That’s a great upgrade rate! And unfortunately also partially explains why Alaska has discontinued this route. Oh well; it was great while it lasted.
I started off the flight in the Capital One Lounge at IAD as I usually do. The best part of taking the evening flight back to SF is that it’s aligned nicely for having dinner in the lounge. That’s especially helpful at the Capital One Lounge, which has a great food offering.
After having dinner in the lounge, it was time to head to the flight, where I would also be served some dinner. At 5 days out, first class was extremely empty, so my upgrade had cleared at the earliest possible time, which was great because it meant I could pre-select my meal, and I was able to select my favorite seat: 1C.
The seat on this 737-900ER was just a standard domestic first class seat. I do, however, wish that Alaska Airlines didn’t treat their 737-900ERs and 737-MAX9s as equivalent because originally, this flight was expected to be operated by a MAX9, which has a better seat (and is quieter).
For better or for worse, I could reasonably expect that this would be my last IAD-SFO flight on Alaska Airlines for the foreseeable future because they had already announced that they would be canceling this route in August when I took this flight in June. I was determined to make the most of it while I could, so I started off with some drinks (not that any of them were alcoholic).
And then I was actually able to get pictures of two different meals:
The top meal is the shrimp linguini pasta, and the bottom meal is the chicken and couscous option. The shrimp pasta was appropriately summery, but I tend not to order pasta on planes, which is why so many pictures are of chicken on the blog. I then ordered some sparkling wine to go with dessert (which was their standard small ice cream).
The drinks and meal service was well-paced, with everyone having time to have a relaxed meal but while also being efficient so that we weren’t waiting too long between service pass throughs.
In summary, my last Alaska Airlines flight from IAD to SFO was great. This might be the last one I take at all, but I’m hopeful they bring the route back eventually (otherwise I may just fly them to DCA). The Capital One Lounge was great as usual (4/5), but for better or worse, the lounge is independent of the actual airline. The seat was a standard domestic first class seat (3/5) and lacked any seat back entertainment, but streaming and (paid) WiFi were available (3/5). The service on the flight was great (5/5), but the food itself was just average (3/5). Overall, the flight gets a slightly above-average 18/25.
I paid $215 for this flight and received the upgrade for free. Since the price was so low, I actually booked this flight through Alaska so that I would earn miles based on the distance flown, rather than based on price. Based on the distance earning metric, I earned about 2 200 AA miles. Had I booked through AA, I would’ve earned about 1 700 miles instead. I actually used an Alaska Airlines gift card I got from Costco ($450 for a $500 gift card), so I effectively got 10% off the sticker price as well (but earned fewer credit card points). As a result, I only earned an additional 194 Chase points (for an overall return of 19% off the net cost, which is still decent).
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