Heading to Cabo on Alaska Airlines

When we landed – uneventfully – at LAX I turned to phone on the find that the one hour extra it took to get in would be easily offset by the 45 minute delay going out which appeared in my inbox via Orbitz alerts. At least there’s one thing I really like about having booked on Orbitz!

I wanted to get my barf bag autographed by the pilot as we deplaned – after all, it was empty despite our rapid deceleration from 250 to 0 MPH and he did a heck of a job scaring the crap out of the birds while keeping us from one or more fether-filled, dead engines. It wasn’t going to happen, however, because he and the co-pilot were busy filing reports.

We knew we had plenty of time after getting off, and we also learned we’d be moving from terminal 4 to terminal 3 to reach Alaska’s hub. The lack of signage detailing how to accomplish this task was what surprised us. Anyone changing terminals at LAX needs to know it isn’t necessarily going to be trivial. For us it meant finding a shuttle to the American Eagle departure building and walking to another bus from there that would reach terminal 3. If someone had an hour to transfer and found themselves a little behind schedule chances are good that a terminal transfer would do them in.

Once we made it to terminal 3 we did pick up on some LAX themes:

1. The terminals we were in desperately need an opportunity to make it out of the 1960s

2. Inter-terminal transportation that many folks take for granted at their home airport is in dogged supply

3. Anything you might get at a typical airport in the way of food and drink will likely cost you up to twice as much, and the choices probably won’t be very enticing either

How does LAX get by with what seems to be a second tier facility, despite the heavy movement of international traffic through the airport? Despite having the means to (reasonably) easily get from terminal to terminal at Dulles via mobile lounges which would make early Austin Powers jealous, DC travelers have been all over the WMATA for years about adding an underground train system – which, incidentally will be completed soon.  And international transfers are very simple, with final destination passengers even being split from the continuing ones, assuring they won’t get shuffled out to the curb as we did at LAX before starting all over again.

Once we grabbed an icky $35 meal from California Pizza Kitchen’s “ASAP” (wait – does that stand for “as sucky as possible”?!?) we headed back to the bus, er plane, terminal to settle in until an agent appeared at our gate. I gave the ground personnel my now familiar story regarding all three of us being scattered to the four winds of the airplane seating chart, and despite a packed house received another round of changes which allowed Willy, Syd, and I to sit together.

Takeoff was a good hour behind schedule due to a late plane and a ground delay on the Cabos side, but the much-friendlier-than-American’s-norm staff made a fairly no frills, modern cabin fairly comfortable (honestly, how comfortable can you get in a sealed metal tube?).

These international flights are always kinda funny, in that you see waves of activity through the cabin which are always unique. It’s amusing to me watching hundreds of people navigating bags underseat and overhead, hunting for the passport and pen they knew doggone well they were going to need for the last six months or more. Add to that rolling beverage carts and the occasional duty free and snack box sale, then through in the reasonably frequent 2+ culture mesh already in the mix and you have one of the better prescriptions for ad hoc team dork dancing.