how to travel to Alaska on a buddy pass

How to travel from Phoenix to Anchorage on Alaskan airlines’ buddy passes

I t is possible to travel with buddy passes. My two friends and I did it and lived to tell.
That being said let me warn…ooops.. I mean inform you about the process this entails.
It was July, 2007, and out ticket booked us to fly from Phoenix, by way of Seattle, to Anchorage Alaska

Buddy passes have rules.

First: You fly stand by
Second: You are put on a list. The list changes. It changes frequently.
Therefore, it does not matter when you arrive at the airport.
The list involves other factors.

If you are an employee of Alaskan air, you will always be at the top of the list.
If you are family of Alaskan air, you are pretty high up there. No matter when you
arrive you will be jumped to your appropriate priority spot.

. Now stay with me on this.
If you are a friend of the employee, you are little further down the list.
If you are a friend of the employee who was hired a long time ago you are higher than ,say, someone who was just hired in 2003
,
I am not sure how the rest of the list goes, but it something like this:
If your friend lived within a mile of your house, you are higher than someone who knew her in high school and moved to Vermont, which is higher than someone who knew her in high school and moved to Vermont before 1989.
If you were friends with the person since high school and had a fight with your friend, and then re-established your relationship after 2003, but before said trip, you have very poor chances of getting to Alaska!.

Therefore, if, like me and my two friends, you get there two hours early for a 6:30am trip where there are 30 open seats, don't expect to get on the plane. It’s not going to happen.

There will be thirty seven stand-bys who swear they were at their "buddy's" family reunion last Augusts who bump ahead of you even if they rush in frantically AS the plane is taxing down the runway!!!.

So, short of cancelling the whole trip and spending the money on a new TV ( where you can watch documentaries of Alaska from now until doomsday) you take a breath and regroup.

To make a long story short, we decided, after watching three perfectly nice planes leave without us, to go to Portland! We knew we'd certainly be able to get to Seattle from Portland ( which has planes leaving every half hour ) and then, hopefully, catch another plane to Anchorage.
Ok. We arrived in Portland.
Now do you remember the rules of the buddy passes?
Keep them in mind as I explain to you what happened from noon to 5:30 pm at the Portland airport.
We waited patiently ( actually we were giggling hysterically half the time from sleep deprivation )as the 3:00pm , 3:30pm , 4:00pm , 4:30 pm , 5:00pm , etc. flew out without us.
They did another trick to keep us off our guard. They actually had the 4:30 leave at 4:40, the 4:00 leave at 4:27, the 5:00 was cancelled ( only to be replaced by the 4:52, etc.)

Needless to say, somewhere around 4:49 we stopped laughing.
Finally, at 5:00pm, we decided to ask where we were on the list. Apparently, we had moved from "near the top" to 42, 43,and 44.
It was about that time that we figured out that we would be living in the Portland terminal for the rest of our lives.

Then out of the blue, a woman from Alaskan airlines told us that a plane leaving for Anchorage in ten minutes had 11 seats still open!
There were only 16 stand bys on the list- so she was sure we would get on!!! What?????? Does this sound mathematically sound to you???
We rushed on over to gate 5 ...and, for some reason only God and Alaskan airlines understood, we got on the plane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So here we are. Our first day in Alaska.