california-bighorn
TUG Member
Last week we flew from Sacamento to Spokane via Sea-Tac to visit our grandkids as close to Christmas as we could. Our return flight on Monday evening (Dec 22)was cancelled with just about every other flight in the Pacific Northwest. Not one to sit around, I rented a car and drove all night headed west to get over the mountain pass. I had my wife speed dialing Alaska & Horizon while driving and after about 3 hours she got thru and confirmed a flight for 6:30 am out of Portland on Horizon. We were headed for Seattle thinking that would be our best bet to catch a flight, so we hung a left and headed south to Portland. Some snow on the road, but not too bad until we got about 20 miles north of Portland. At that point it was real tough, but we made it to the airport. Right after turning in the rental car around 3am, we received an alert on our cell phones that the flight we had booked out of Portland was now also cancelled because the plane was stuck somewhere else. Back to the phones to call Alaska & Horizon. They were able to put us on what was an unscheduled flight from Portland to San Francisco @ 9:30am. This was one of two planes they were able to get into Portland that night in anticipation of a break in the weather the next morning. I don't think anyone on that plane had an original destination of San Francisco, but we were all elated that Alaska Air made the effort to help as many stranded passengers as possible get closer to home. From SFO it was an easy 2 hour drive to the Sacramento airport to get our car. I've already sent a nice email to Alaska Air thanking them for their outstanding customer service allowing us to be home this Christmas morning with the rest of the family.
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