A little luck, a little advantage, a little travel, and a little effort
I had been working with Amazon for almost 4 years and had moved to Seattle 6 months back from India. Since then I have traveled many places and a couple of them with Alaska airlines. Click here for more details on each of these places
On a random lucky day, Amazon employees got an email that Alaska and Amazon have tied up to benefit the employees with extra miles for each journey and MVP status after two round-trips. I really wanted to make the best use of this and made a travel plan to Denver to reach the MVP status and avail advantages like free baggage, early boarding, and complimentary upgrades.
Today was my last day in Seattle and I was doing a mini-tour before I reach India. My first stop was in Montreal and I had booked a connecting flight from Seattle to Montreal with a layover in Boston. The first leg was 5-hour long with Alaska airlines and the second one with Westjet airlines.
I was very excited to travel with an MVP status and was curious about what all I can use it for. While waiting in queue to check-in the baggage, I saw a counter at some distance for MVP and Gold class members. I quickly got out of the long queue and headed to the counter. I was expecting to pay baggage fees for my flight from Boston to Montreal because of different airlines, but to my surprise, I didn’t have to, not yet sure why.
After the security check, I seated myself comfortably at the boarding gate just when I got an idea to try my luck to get a business class seat using my MVP status.
Immediately, I went to the Alaska customer service counter and asked the lady at the desk if my seat could be upgraded. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about the response. The lady hit some keys on her computer and that’s when my hopes got high. I was trying hard to not smile and had my fingers crossed when she looked up and said that I was able to get an upgrade. Though only for a domestic flight of 4 hours, I was pretty excited about the upgrade, as much as I broadcasted to my friends and my family and social media.
Inside the plane
Having 28A seat initially which was towards the end of the plane and moving to almost front of the plane with 7A seat was super awesome. I walked towards my open space big seat and got adjusted. Some of the special treatments were a hot towel to freshen up, followed by complimentary entertainment tablet and a blanket. I ordered a drink of my choice and for the food, we were served hummus and pita with salad on the side. The food quantity was less but extremely good. I could repeat my drink any number of times I wanted to I guess. For the rest of my flight, I watched a few series cozied up in the blanket and towards the end of the flight, we were offered a small shot of smoothie before we started preparing for landing.
I had a little more expectations from business class, but I think that is what you get for short durational flights, so it's pretty awesome.
That was an end of my mini-dream flight and it makes me hopeful for trying for an upgrade for other airlines too.
