Alaska Airlines

Gotta fly? BOGO sale on Alaska Airlines

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Need – or want – to fly somewhere between now and October 31, 2020?

Then check out Alaska Airline’s 48-hour “BOGO” sale which is running now through 11:59 pm PT on August 9, 2020.

The deal: Buy one main cabin fare ticket and get a second one on the same itinerary for just the cost of taxes and fees.

This is ideal if you want to travel with someone and make sure there’s an empty seat in your row. Here area Alaska’s tips for making your booking:

  1. In the booking form on this page, enter your departure and arrival cities, dates, and 2 travelers.
  2. Enter GETTHEROW into the discount code field, and then click “Find flights” to start your search.
  3. Be sure to select your window and aisle seats.

Alaska Airline’s safety measures

Of course, whether you take a flight in the next few months may depend on a variety of health and safety issues, and your comfort level. It may also depend on how comfortable and confident you are about the safety measures your airline is taking.

With the kick-off of this BOBO fare, Alaska Airlines is also enhancing and extending its Next-Level Care safety measures for fall travel:

Here are the elements of Alaska Airline’s plans:

*The airline is capping capacity and will block middle seats through Oct. 31, 2020.

*Alaska’s Peace of Mind waivers (no change/cancellation fees) is being extended for tickets purchased by September 8, 2020.

*Effective now, Alaska Airlines has stricter mask policies, including:

All passengers over the age of two are required to wear a mask or face covering over their nose and mouth, with no exceptions; 

If a traveler does not wear a mask they will not be allowed to fly. This policy applies to the airline’s ticket counters, gate areas, and inflight.

Following the lead of some other airlines, Alaska Airlines passengers who refuse to wear a mask in-flight will lose flying privileges.

During a flight, Alaska Airlines flight attendants are authorized to give a “final notice” – in the form of a yellow card – to passengers who disregard or disobey the requirement to wear a mask or face covering.

Until now, that yellow card initiated a review process. But now, if someone is yellow-carded, Alaska will suspend flight privileges immediately for all future travel, with no review process.

Travel Tidbits – Out of the Inbox edition

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Enter these sweepstakes

Baseball is back. (Sort of). And Alaska Airlines has a fun promo running with the Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants.

Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants fans – or anyone – can enter to win one million miles as part of Alaska’s Million-Mile Home Run Sweepstakes. Register with your Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan number, or sign up to get one free.

As a bonus, each week of the season Alaska Airlines will also pick one winner to receive air travel and tickets to 2021 Spring Training.

We also found an easy to enter sweepstakes from Bojangles. Prizes include $2,500 in cash, a $500 hotel gift card, a $500 gas card, a $500 rental car gift card, and $500 to spend at Bojangles.

Giant Robots at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport

Ten-foot-tall robots, a whole family of them, are now ‘living’ in the Phoenix Airport Museum’s Terminal 4 Gallery at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX).

The robots are part of an installation titled “Electro-Symbio Phonics for Phoenix,” by Nam June Paik.

What you’ll see: a mother, father, and child robot in an athletic pose with arms raised nearly touching the ceiling. Their heads, appendages, and torsos consist of 63 televisions blitzing with fast-paced video clips of sports highlights, popular culture, and desert imagery.

Ready to reconsider cruising?

Do you think you – and the world – might be ready to embrace cruising again in a year or so? Then you might want to go all-in on Viking’s new 2021-2022 Viking World Cruise. The trip will last 136 days, with visits to 27 countries and 56 ports.

The ship sets sail in Fort Lauderdale on December 24, 2021. After visiting ports of call in Central America, transiting through the Panama Canal, and going up the West Coast of North America, the ship will cross the Pacific Ocean and visit Hawaii. From there it’s off to New Zealand and Australia, Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean before ending in London.

Too long a trip for you? There’s a shorter, 119-day sailing. The 2022 Viking World Horizons which departs from Los Angeles on January 10, 2022, and visits 22 countries and 49 ports before ending in London.

Prices (which include lots of extras, such as business class airfare and transfers to and from the ship) start at $49,995 per person for the 2021-2022 Viking World Cruise and $45,995 for the 2022 World Cruise Horizons (based on double occupancy).

Travel tidbits from airports and airlines

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Soon, maybe not very soon, but soon, you will go to an airport and board a plane.

In the meantime, here are some newsy tidbits from that world.

Alaska Airlines is staying active. And a bit fishy

You may be sitting around and not getting many frequent flyer miles from flying.

But Alaska Airlines has a fun campaign that will award you some bonus miles for staying active.

The airline is buddying up with fitness app Strava to give away 250,000 miles to Mileage Plan members as part of the Miles on the Ground Challenge.

Get the app, do 360 minutes physical activity by May 30, 2020, and you will qualify to enter a drawing to win up to 100,000 miles.

Alaska Airlines also did a nice pivot with the annual fly-in of the first Copper River salmon from Alaska to Seattle.

Instead of heading to area restaurants, part of the first planeload of copper river salmon became meals for health care workers. The rest was used for a salmon dinner fundraiser that generated enough money to buy 77,000 meals for people in the community.

COVID-19 testing at airports

There is a lot of chatter about doing thermal cameras and temperature checks at airport security checkpoints and boarding gates.

But that is not a foolproof method of determining if a passenger has a case of COVID-19.

So, several airports and airlines are going beyond that and requiring passengers to either have proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test result or take a test on the spot to avoid quarantine.

In mid-April, Dubai-based Emirates began requiring passengers departing Dubai International Airport to underdo rapid COVID-19 blood tests, with results in 10 minutes.

Testing at Vienna Airport

Anyone traveling to Austria right now is required to either have a recent medical certificate showing they are negative for COVID-19 or go into a 14-day quarantine.

For arriving passengers without a medical certificate but with a residence in Austria and a valid resident permit, Vienna International Airport (VIE) is offering the opportunity to get tested for COVID-19 on the spot.

The tests are not free. They cost EUR 190 (about $207), but the results come back in three to six hours and, if negative, allow the passenger to skip the quarantine.

All other arriving passengers without a health certificate are sent immediately to quarantine, according to the airport, and “must arrange for themselves to be tested by a laboratory at the quarantine location, which may involve longer waiting times.”

Iceland planning on the spot COVID-19 tests at KEF Airport

The government of Iceland expects to begin welcoming back international flight no later than June 15. And when it does, the plan is to give travelers the option of getting testing for COVID-19 on arrival at Keflavik Airport (KEF) to avoid a two-week quarantine.

Details are still being worked out on how that will play out.

Quito Airport cueing up it COVID-19 testing too

Quito International Airport (UIO) expects commercial flights to resume on June 1.

But it already has stations installed for rapid COVID-19 testing of passengers.

10 temporary testing stations are set up now and were first used on May 18 to test passengers on a charter Aeromexico flight from Mexico City carrying 120 repatriating passengers.

Coronavirus brings more bad news for travelers.

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The coronavirus (COVID-19) is bringing with it a lot of fast-breaking, bad news for travelers and the travel industry.

Over the weekend, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines announced the temporary suspension of flights to Milan, Italy and United Airlines announced a temporary suspension of flights to Tokyo Narita, Osaka Singapore and Seoul.

And, because travelers are holding back on buying new plane tickets, on Sunday American Airlines announced it will join JetBlue and Alaska Airlines in offering a change fee waiver on new tickets purchased in the next two weeks.

Alaska Airlines also shared some notes about the efforts it is taking to keep planes clean and passengers safe.

The airline says using wipes to clean armrests and tray tables is fine, but they’re asking passengers not to use cleaning wipes on the leather seats because commercial wipes will deteriorate the top coat of leather.

“The wipe might look dirty, ” says Alaska, “but it’s actually the leather dye color that’s coming off.”

Bad news for travelers may keep coming for a while, so it was refreshing to have Saturday Night Live do this silly bit about traveling through New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

Airlines continue coronavirus response

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Alaska Airlines has added a “Peace of Mind’ cancellation and fee waiver policy to help travelers worried about what might happen next with the coronavirus.

The peace of mind waiver doesn’t apply to flights you may have booked months ago, only for new bookings.

But if you book a flight prior to March 12 and then decide by that date to change or cancel your trip, this might help. If you decide to cancel, Alaska is offering full travel credit for a flight up to one year from the issuance of your credit. Although fare differences when you rebook will appy.

JetBlue announced a similar program earlier in the week:

“Due to evolving coronavirus concerns, we are suspending change and cancel fees for all new flight bookings made between February 27, 2020 and March 11, 2020 for travel through June 1, 2020,” JetBlue says.

The airline notes that there are no current travel restrictions to the locations they fly. But it seems travelers have jitters and airline bookings are down everywhere. So JetBlue, Alaska and likely others shortly – will be taking action to reassure travelers and encourage them to continue getting on planes.

How are coronavirus concerns affecting your travel plans?