01.10.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:23 am by DMZ
Round-trip to San Jose this weekend:
Lowest fare: $290 SW, $312 AS
Fully refundable: $300 SW, $372 AS
I can see where you’d pick Alaska if you were hung up on frequent-flier miles and advance seat assignment (and unaware of what’s going on with them flying out of Seatac).
21st-22nd
Lowest fare: $238 SW, $258 AS
Fully refundable: $300 SW, $372 AS
…
Feb 11-12
Lowest fare: $158 SW, $183 AS
Fully refundable: $300 SW, $317 AS
Two reactions:
I’m surprised that SW is actually less competitive as date-of-travel approaches. I’d have thought Alaska would really squeeze those travelers and SW would have a huge cost advantage, but it’s not showing up. But it actually looks like you have to get further out, where Southwest’s crazy internet-only specials are available, before they start to beat Alaska on price.
Alaska’s cost to operate a flight is so much higher than Southwest’s I don’t understand how this is possible. I wonder how the two evolved in pricing to compete on this route, and why each is where they are. Also, I wish I could look up what their loads are… baffling.
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01.08.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:28 pm by DMZ
I’ve flown Alaska a lot on Seattle to the Bay over the last couple years, and in particular the Seattle-San Jose route (for business, sometimes one-day but frequently multi-day roundtrips). I don’t think I ever got out of San Jose on time, and I had some bad experiences trying to get out of Seattle too.
I flew Southwest to San Jose to see my brother, and here’s what happened:
- ticket was half as expensive
- Southwest people were as cool or cooler than Alaska people (and I’ve really liked some of my Alaska crews)
- Seating was easy, even on a fairly full flight, and the seat seemed a little more comfortable than I remembered Alaska’s being
- departed on time for both flights
- arrived early for both flights
- Southwest has nice gates in San Jose, with available seating and normal airport amenities, while Alaska’s gates are pretty wretched (especially when overflowing with passengers from late and cancelled flights).
Southwest was like a machine, everything smooth and pleasant. I’ve had one Alaska round-trip that didn’t involve a cancelled flight, significant delays, or some other problem in the last eighteen months, when I started flying down regularly (though, in fairness, I may well have forgotten some).
Right now, if Alaska solved all their problems: they started to run on-time, they stopped having planes rip open mid-flight, all the rest of it, I’d still book Southwest on that route.
And I have to wonder, then — if someone like me, who’s been flying Alaska for as long as I can remember, and has always tended to chose them over similarly-priced competition (and paid a premium to book instead of United in some cases), has decided to give up on Alaska, how are they going to compete for passengers?
Fares? They can’t beat Southwest.
Service? Nothing differentiates them from United or anyone else flying around here, and Southwest’s pretty much just as good.
Routes? To Alaskan destinations, sure, but otherwise it’s not as if they have anything special compared to their peers.
The only reason I can think of is that Alaska’s fleet, since they have to fly out of Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Ketchican, are all well-equipped for really foul weather flying and their pilots, you’d expect, get more experience in those kind of conditions. But if that peace-of-mind is negated by the safety issues they’re having flying out of Sea-Tac, what’s left?
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01.06.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:38 am by DMZ
If I announced, every day, that I was going to go steal a car off of a dealer’s lot, and then I did it, and left a business card with my fingerprints on it and a picture of me stealing the car, how long would it be before I was thrown in jail? A day? Two days?
But if you’re a spammer, or a fax spammer for that matter, you can get away with this. I’m baffled as to why this is the case.
USSM got beaten up recently when a spammer (or group of them) used an exploit in our site’s software (Wordpress) to send out all kinds of horrible advertisements. This required our hosting company to shut us down, patch the server, after which I had to put down the beer bottle and book I was reading and go upgrade the whole site to a new version.
In a sense, it’s like having someone break into your house — you’ve got to go fix the window, go through the inventory… except that the cops don’t care.
This amazes me. I know they don’t really do a whole lot to catch a car thief, but it’s as if they steal your car and use it to drive around holding up convenience stores, and the cops are okay with both the theft and the hold-ups.
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