We arrived at the
Seattle-Tacoma airport with plenty of time to spare to catch Alaska
Airlines Flight 95 at 8:30AM to Anchorage, arriving at 10:30 AM --
or so we thought.
Randy and Gaye went to one Alaska Airlines agent while Judy and I
went to another to check in. Our gate agent got a perplexed
expression on his face and began furiously punching keys on his
computer. Suddenly he said, "Excuse me, I need to go back to
the back", and disappeared through a doorway.
I looked down at Randy and Gaye and their gate agent had the same
perplexed look on his face. Our agent came back, mumbled something
about our flight and ran down to talk to the agent helping Gaye and
Randy.
Suddenly in a whirlwind of activity another Alaska Airlines employee
herded us over to a luggage x-ray machine and quickly checked our
luggage. She said something about our flight being cancelled or
the schedule changed or something but not to worry, she had us on
another flight to Anchorage. She quickly added that the flight
arrived in Anchorage in mid-afternoon and made FIVE stops along the way!
She hurried us to the security checkpoint and requested that we
quickly proceed to the gate. Randy, Gaye, and Judy made it though
the checkpoint in a flash. I, on the other hand, was carrying the
bag with the camera, a small computer, and all their attachments.
The bag blew the security x-ray, so naturally they wanted to take everything
out and hand search it. And while they were doing that, they
scanned me again with the metal-detecting wand and had me take my shoes
off for inspection with an explosive sniffing device.
After what seemed like forever, I finally cleared the checkpoint and
ran down to the gate - only to find that Judy and I were assigned seats
which were "randomly" selected to undergo additional security
screening. This despite the fact that I had been thoroughly
searched only 40 yards and 2 minutes ago!
Naturally, the computer and camera bag set off alarms again so I had
to go through the entire unpacking, hand searching, wand waving, shoe
inspection again!
We finally made it on the aircraft just as the wheels started rolling
and settled in to ponder a flight to Anchorage with five stops along the
way.
One of the flight attendants told us that normally they stacked cargo
in the passenger area because they had so few passengers, but this was a
full flight. Full of fishermen going to small villages like
Wrangell for spring-time Alaskan fishing and at least one other couple
who had been booked on the non-existent Flight 95.
Our Boeing 737 landed on short runways in places where we
saw only a shack serving as the terminal. Some places we never saw
the city! The plane would hit the runway and the pilot would slam
on the brakes. The flight attendant would announce that the stops
would be only 14 MINUTES, 17 MINUTES, or in one case 11 MINUTES.
Don't even think about deplaning! Then we would taxi back to the
end of the runway, rev the engines and hope we would clear the mountains
looming straight ahead!
All in all it was an exciting and beautiful flight. Whenever we
broke though the cloud cover we saw snow-covered mountain peaks
stretching to the horizon. Seven hours later we finally arrived in Anchorage and boarded the bus to
the port city of Seward.
