KTDonthGO: Hometown Airline

GO WITH ME, for a moment, to a perfect day of air travel: Tickets secured, bags checked, and TSA navigated with nary a hitch. Your family is ready and waiting at the assigned airport gate with backpacks of snacks and amusements guaranteed to get you from one airport to another with the aura of seasoned travelers. Bam! You so got this.

That is, until your youngest screams he has to go potty two seconds before boarding, so your spouse sends you flying to the bathroom (because you forgot you could use the bathrooms on board the aircraft) only to discover that it is too late and now the clothes are wet, you are wet, (and you have no dry clothes, because you forgot those, too) and gate agents are calling your name in a sickening-sweet tone of voice. To make matters worse, you rush on board to find out the airline double-dipped your seat with a business traveler who looks at your disheveled family and pushes that Wall Street Journal even closer to his/her face when you show up right about the time flight attendants come on the intercom system to say there movie service is unavailable because of a malfunctioning wiring, but, don’t worry, everyone gets extra snack mix as a consolation prize. And you haven’t even left the tarmac.

While most air travel with kids is disaster-free (notice I didn’t say stress-free) and not really like the scenario I described above, it does seem that our nation is obsessed with the “not-so-friendly-skies,” especially after a recent incident aboard an east coast airplane where flight attendants refused to give a child milk because said beverage needed to be used for other passengers’ coffee.

Here in Alaska, we don’t really have the option to choose our airlines if somebody does us wrong. We have one major carrier upon which to depend for most of the year, Alaska Airlines, and fortunately, they pride themselves on taking care of families who fly Last Frontier skies. Here’s why: Alaska’s philosophy stems from an 80-year relationship with rural communities, ferrying business travelers, school children, kids with medical needs, and basketball teams to and from larger centers. Kids are often unaccompanied, excited, or frightened, so customer service means more than offering bottomless cups of soda or plastic wings. Alaska employees really, really care, and for a family, that can make the coming home part way more exciting than the leaving part (seriously).

Right out of the gate, a super cool computer program prevents the undesirable scattering of families throughout the airplane? We flew from Anchorage to Portland not long ago, and two of the three of us were seated in a separate section, so ticketing agents reseated us all together. Provided you follow the AKontheGO Golden Rule of Airport Etiquette and arrive 2 hours early, ticketing can usually be shuffled around to accommodate families who were not originally seated together.

Alaska’s Unaccompanied Minor program, too, gives parents a measure of comfort when sending their children off on an adventure all their own. Free media players, snacks, drinks, and a little extra love and attention from flight attendants goes a long way. Alaska will also be rolling out a snack pack this week for children like mine who turn up their noses at fancy fruit and cheese plates.

I’ve asked Alaska flight attendants for everything from plastic bags for wet clothes to extra ice for a sore throat. In turn, they’ve listened to my kid scream and push all the buttons on the overhead display and crumble up the snack pack crackers on the floor. Yet they’ve never complained (out loud). It’s tough enough traveling with kids inside a flying cigar; it means the world to have other adults on board who understand, or, at least, fake it enough to let me disembark with at least a semblance of peaceful expression upon my face.