Many airlines create special paint schemes or special liveries for parts of their fleets. Alaska Airlines is no different with several special liveries, one of my favorites is their Salmon-Thirty-Salmon! This special Boeing 737 (said seven-thirty-seven) features a salmon painted on each side with an added “Wild Alaska Seafood” tagline. It is a very unique livery and offers a nice conversation starter, “I flew on an Alaska Airlines Salmon-Thirty-Salmon today!”, often generates the response: “A what?” from my non-avgeek friends.

Mainline Alaska Airlines – Salmon Thirty Salmon

My previous blog entry, Alaska Airlines by SkyWest – Boise to Seattle on an Embraer 175, was not actually with an Alaska Airlines crew per se. Alaska and many other airlines contract smaller regional carriers to provide services on smaller less passenger dense routes. Skywest provides this service for Alaska, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines from Boise. This is, therefore, my first actual mainline flight with Alaska airlines for many years. I am looking forward to the comparison!

On-board Experience

Once onboard, the Premium Class seat is quite roomy. According to SeatGuru.com (a great flyer resource, btw) the Premium Class Slimline seat pitch for the Boeing 737-800 in measures 35 inches with a width of 17 inches. The seating area felt more expansive than that, but it may have been a result of my seat mate being a slim 12 year old boy.

One nice feature included with these seats is the inclusion of seatback power. The universal power port is located right underneath the tray table making it very convenient for use. Many other carriers put a seat power port on the front of your seat. This front location is not convenient and causes regular hunting for the plug should it be needed. In addition, this location clearly is intended for the passenger immediately in front of the power port.

United Airlines also provides some seatback power, as with this transcontinental Boeing 777 flight, however, the ratio of ports to passengers was not equal. My seatmate on and I this flight had one port to share.

Seattle to Vancouver

According to Flightaware.com, this flight was only 35 minutes in duration. Unfortunately, this prevented any evaluation of the inflight service. At 35 minutes there was not drink or snack service. I’ll need to try another flight on Alaska Airlines in the future. In fact, I may end up using them for a trip to Hawaii!

Even with the short duration, we were still afforded some spectacular views of the Strait of Georgia and the channel islands within.

Vancouver International Airport is quite nice. I’ll be sharing more about the airport on the return flight blog. Entering Canada in Vancouver was simple and painless. Obviously, given the secure nature of the entry process there won’t be any pictures from that. I hope you’ll check out my hotel review of the JW Marriott as well as my first attempts at photo time-lapse.

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