Seattle Port Authority Sucks

After an uneventful Alaska Air flight from Reno to Seattle (and a nice Mount St. Helens flyby), we landed early only to learn that the jetway was broken and could not be brought out to the plane. With this message we embarked on a tedious and somewhat scary journey to nowhere.

At various times we were told that the jetway was broken, that we would be using stairs from the front, stairs from the back, that management was on their way to move the jetway (what did the plan to do, order it to move?), that a breaker in the jetway would be reset, and so forth. The plane was pushed back twice, 10 or 12 feet each time.

People were beginning to freak out as they realized that we were basically trapped inside and that they couldn’t get us out even though the plane was intact and we were at the gate. They could have moved us to another gate 5 minutes into the affair. How hard would it be to figure this out? I am sure that the average gorilla could have figured this out without too much difficulty.

Don’t they have a contingency plan for something as simple as this? What would these buffoons do if there was a real emergency?

I have to question the competency of all involved in this debacle; I will be sending a detailed rant to the Seattle Port Authority in the near future. As far as I can tell, Alaska Air is blameless here.

Overall, management of all types at Sea-Tac is in disarray. Incompetence at the local TSA office means that we have the nation’s longest average waiting times for the security screening. With this event, I see that these people are actively preventing us from getting on to or getting off planes! I guess they think that the airport is there to sell us overpriced food and drink, not to help us to actually go somewhere.