My Alaska Airlines photo contest entry

A snapshot  associated with   OUR   only two  entries  to the  2010 Alaska  Airline photo contest...  opportunities   of  winning  are  super slim but never  realize   whether or not  ya don't try. :)
I decided  to  enter  The idea  last minute  towards the   night out   of the  postmark deadline  as well as  had  to help   Select   some  photos  It  happened  to help   always be   on   OUR  laptop  on the  time...  after that  super  quick   delivered  them  to help  Walgreens 1-hour (they  retail outlet   including  crap)  and   managed to get   to the  post  team   a number of  minutes  previous  they closed...    

The Alaska Formula: How the Airline Changes and Keeps Customers Happy

As aircraft seat technology has improved, we've seen a lot of  Alaska airlines start replacing existing seats with newer "slimline" seats. With a thinner seatback and a re-positioned seatback pocket, airlines claim they can provide the same amount of space to travelers while creating enough room to add a row or two of additional seats.

Alaska is the latest airline to do this by announcing that it would re-fit about three quarters of its fleet with these new kinds of chairs. But Alaska is doing things a little differently. Unlike other airlines, it's trying to make this a true win-win for itself and its passengers: It's adding in-seat power and new in-flight entertainment options.
It's rare to find a domestic airline with power outlets onboard, but when you do, it's usually two for every three seats. You know how this works —the outlet sits between the two seats, underneath the chairs. Limited legroom makes it pretty difficult to get down there, find the outlet, and plug your device in. Alaska is placing the outlets (both 110V and USB ports) in the back of every airplane seat—so it's right in front of you, and you don't have to share.

The entertainment system is getting an upgrade, too: Passengers may stream video from an onboard server directly to their own electronics (iPads, laptops, etc.) or to a device rented from the airline. Today, only the latter is available with Alaska's fairly expensive DigEPlayer option.

After minor turbulence, Alaska Airlines suspends prayer cards

After causing a bit of turbulence with some passengers, Alaska Airlines will no longer serve prayer cards with in-flight meals, the company announced Wednesday (Jan. 25).
The cards, which take a line or two from the Book of Psalms, have been an Alaska Airlines trademark for 30 years, uplifting some flyers but annoying others.
“This difficult decision was not made lightly,” wrote Alaska Air Group Chairman and CEO Bill Ayer and Alaska Airlines President Brad Tilden, in a letter to frequent flyers miles.

Alaska Airlines uses ExtraHop to ensure that flights take off

The Wall Street Journal recently posted an article titled Ensuring That Flight Takes Off – From The Data Center. The article describes why Alaska Airlines turned to ExtraHop Networks to help solve its application performance issues. Chris Grey, Alaska Airlines’ director of IT operations, explains, “We’ve definitely seen a positive impact, in many cases [the ExtraHop Application Performance Management system] can cut our troubleshooting time in half.” A 50% reduction in mean time to resolution (MTTR) is just one of the reasons the ExtraHop system is used extensively within the travel industry by companies including Expedia, Continental Airlines, Kayak, Carlson, and others.
Reducing MTTR isn’t the only reason for the widespread use of the ExtraHop system in the travel industry. As the WSJ article notes, “applications used to be monolithic, but now they’re spread across several layers, including a Web server, a database and middleware to tie it all together. Those layers have become tougher to manage as applications have become more integrated with each other and data centers have many more servers than they used to.” The ExtraHop system is the only passive solution on the market that offers proactive early warning and accelerated troubleshooting across all tiers, including network, web, database, and storage.
Additionally, as the WSJ article points out, “add in virtualization and cloud computing—two emerging trends that enable applications to be more mobile and distributed than ever before—and the problems are only likely to get worse.” The ExtraHop application performance management system easily recognizes and adjusts to these complex and dynamic environments, analyzing a copy of the production network traffic in real time and extracting the valuable health and performance information. Rather than sample a portion of network traffic or require agents on every device, the ExtraHop system passively and dynamically adjusts to changing environments.
Progressive enterprises are realizing that a retrospective view of their network environment—a view that one might achieve using legacy technologies, such as NetFlow collection, SNMP polling, custom performance agents, or TCP-header inspection—is not sufficient to meet the demands of operating in a competitive environment where problem resolution must occur immediately. Even more importantly, through proactive early warning, trouble spots can be isolated and corrective action taken before a problem even occurs.
Alaska Airlines has made headlines in the past for its technological leadership in the travel industry, and we’re proud to be part of the latest achievements by their IT operations team.
For a copy of our newest case study featuring Alaska Airlines, email j.baker [at] extrahop.com. Let’s explore how the ExtraHop system can get your applications flying faster.

Alaska Airlines mobile site—5 features to geek out on

After working with Alaska Airlines on their iPhone and Android apps, we moved on to the next project in their mobile portfolio: a revamped mobile site, built from the ground up. We wanted to build a site that’s fast, intuitive, beautifully designed, and works across a variety of screens. Sounds simple enough, right?

Search­ing for Alaska Air­lines Award Availability

The best place to search for award avail­abil­ity on Alaska Air­lines is actu­ally the Amer­i­can Air­lines web­site. As a bonus, British Air­ways miles can be redeemed on Amer­i­can Air­lines as well. So if you inad­ver­tently come across a really good Amer­i­can Air­lines flight in your search, you can book that with you British Air­ways miles too! 
For my exam­ple, I am going to try to find flights from Los Ange­les to Van­cou­ver in June. June seems such a nice time to visit the Pacific North­west! Once on the Amer­i­can Air­lines web­site, I am going to type in my cities and dates.

Alaska Airlines Gives Customers New Ways to Explore with Innovative Windows 8 App

At Alaska Airlines, we want to be the easiest airline to fly. And one of the ways we want to accomplish that is by using innovative technology.
Alaska Air was the first US airline to offer online booking in 1996 and the first to offer self-service check-in in 1999. Now our customers are embracing mobile as part of their travel experience, so we want to provide great mobile experiences. Tablets are becoming especially popular for researching and booking travel.
When Microsoft introduced Windows 8, we started thinking about how we could take advantage of its easy to use apps and intuitive design to help our customers. In fact, while we were still considering a new travel app for Windows 8, one of our developers stayed up most of the night building a prototype—just for fun! The next morning, he came into my office to show us what he’d developed. It was fantastic.
We decided to partner with Microsoft to create a Deals and Destinations App, which is tailored to help our customers find the best deals. The app is available free for download from the Windows 8 Store and it is optimized for a variety of devices, including tablets and any desktop PC running Windows 8.
Travelers can use the app to search for tickets to any one of the 90+ cities across North America and Mexico that Alaska Mileage serves. As they browse fares, shoppers can view photos and read descriptions of the places they plan to visit. Once customers are ready to lock in their purchase, they are directed to the main Alaska Airlines website to complete the transaction.