Alaska Positioning Boeing 737s on SFO-JFK Transcontinental Flights

I love flying the old Virgin America Airbus 319s and 320s first-class cabin. The large white leather recliner seats with 55 inches of pitch are incredibly roomy even in the 2×2 row spacing. The cabin is very private with purple tinted plexiglass barriers that separate the eight forward seats from the rest of the cabin.

There is a purple-velvet rope divider, red carpet style, used during flight between the coach and first cabin to restrict access. This cabin configuration was used on all Virgin America planes giving the customer a consistent experience when traveling. The lie-flat issue aside, in my opinion there wasn’t a better narrow body first class cabin in the US.

Virgin America First Class Cabin

As Alaska Airlines has proceeded in their acquisition and integration of Virgin America, they had kept Virgin’s Airbus crafts on the SFO-JFK routes. This is now changing, and Alaska is selectively inserting Boeing crafts on some of the SFO-JFK routes. While the SFO-JFK was a longstanding Virgin America route, it was new to Alaska Airlines at the time of the acquisition.

I discovered this when I was notified of a flight change by Alaska. I had purchased two first round-trip tickets, SFO-JFK-SFO, for Susan and I and when verifying the seat assignments discovered the equipment change. All the daily flights have not been changed, and I thought about changing my two flights to an earlier or later time. Ultimately, I couldn’t do this as our schedule would not be flexible on this trip. I did call Alaska and asked for a refund since I felt the replaced product was not equal, to which they politely declined. Instead I refunded the flights to “my wallet” in the Mileage Plan account and then repurchased the tickets in coach and upgraded with an MVP guest upgrade. Per person it reduced $1400 in ticket costs to about just over $500, which I feel is a good deal for Alaska’s Boeing first class product.

Alaska Airbus First Class Seating 

Alaska Boeing First Class Seating

In looking at the routes affected the pattern is a bit odd. On Alaska’s 4 daily flights between SFO and JFK the first flight has been converted to a Boeing 737 as of August 26th this month. The last return flight of the 4 daily JFK-SFO segments are the converted flights. This is also true for the SFO-EWR route. The LAX-JFK routes haven’t changed as of now. The Boeing 737’s are in position through Saturday November 3rd, at which point the flights reverts back to the Airbus 3XX product for the rest of schedule. Either this is a short-term measure on Alaska’s part, or they haven’t had a chance to update the rest of the schedule. I’m guessing the latter.

Alaska has talked about using the Airbus product up and down the west coast, and the Boeing 737s cross country since their Q1 earnings call last year. They have further reinforced those desires in their two earning calls this year and it looks like this is the first step in doing so.

From Alaska Airlines Investor Day Slide Show

Net Net

As an individual I enjoy the old Virgin America first class cabin, so this change isn’t a welcome one. A West Coast to JFK transcontinental flight can take over six hours, and there are significant differences between Alaska’s Boeing and Airbus first class products. Seat back IFE, a roomy cabin and physical configurations can and do make a real difference between the two products. That stated, Alaska isn’t going to ignore the income advantages and efficiencies of the Boeing 737 product for these long-haul routes. I’ll be changing my strategy to purchase Alaska transcontinental flights closer to departure, this will increase my chances of getting the old-style Virgin America Airbus plane and cabin. At least until Alaska completely switches the routes out.