Today's flight is from home base in Seattle to visit family in the Tampa area for New Year's. We are taking Alaska Airlines on their day flight direct to TPA, with a scheduled departure of 8:25 in the morning. We checked in around 6:45am, which given the busy holiday season during SEA's biggest departure bank, was a bad idea. Security alone took over 50 minutes, at checkpoint 5 (which always seems to take forever). Departure today was out of a hardstand bus-boarding gate. SEA has implemented quite a few bus gates due to the construction/renovation of the second half of the North Satellite, so the airport is short a few gates.
Entry into the departure lounge for the upper-D gates, where we would be departing, was surprisingly nice for a facility that should be considered temporary.
Boarding the bus at 8:08. At this point, there is no way we'll be departing on-time. These gates are slow.
Meeting the aircraft, along with a significant line on the boarding ramp. Our ride today is N549AS, a 2005-built Boeing 737-800.
Boarded at 8:35, in seat 19F.
Photos from the pushback.
Departure off of runway 16C at 9:03am.
Photos from climb and cruise. I brought my own food for this flight as usual, so no food review today. I got myself some cran-apple juice, and settled down for the 4 hour 57 minute flight over some stunning scenery on the way to Tampa.
Descent and sunset over the western coast of Florida.
We landed on TPA's runway 19L at 5:00pm, 12 minutes behind schedule. We left for the rental car facility and drove south towards our destination.
Flightradar24 screenshots:
(It's not taking my cropped screenshots, so if you want to see the full above photos, open them in a new tab)
This was a great flight with my favorite airline. TPA is a really fantastic airport, but unfortunately SEA did not hit the mark this time.
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