Flight Report: $490 to Stockholm on Norwegian... Plus, first time on a 787!

One of the new benefits of being in Oakland is that I have a new option for getting to Scandinavia: Norwegian flies to Stockholm, non-stop, from Oakland. It's a ten hour flight where you step on in California and off in Sweden. That's pretty much unheard of, since I've always had some connection, either in Europe or on the East Coast. The most convenient was always SAS, who flew to Copenhagen and then onward to Stockholm... but this is a new level of convenience.

Plus, my ticket was $490 round trip. I've paid more to get to the mid-west. For that price, you might be wondering what you get and how scandalous Norwegian will treat you once you get to the airport. After all, prices that cheap make people think of RyanAir and their shenanigans.

Turns out, you get exactly what you pay for. In my case, I opted to skip any additional services like food, drinks, checked bags, and a reserved seat (saving $140 in the process) and I got what I paid for: A spot on a plane. They did weigh my carry on (there is a 10kg limit that IS enforced), but none of the Ryan Air stuff like being forced to check in online or pony up a hundred dollars.

On the plane, there is no free drink or food service, but you can ask for a glass of water in the back for free. Otherwise, the best move is to bring it with you; Even at airport prices (and Oakland Airport does suck for food), it's still less than buying it on the plane. I didn't get a snap of their meals, but it looked like standard airline fare. Not worth the money they want for it.

The bottom line is this: I'll fly with them again. They are cut rate, but they are at least nice about it.

Another big bonus for this flight was that I finally got to fly on a 787. I've been waiting for the opportunity to take a trip on one of these aircraft and Norwegian runs them on their international routes (to the US and Thailand). Inside, it is pretty spacious. The cabin is nice and the storage pulls up pretty far to give it the feeling of having extra room. The new electrochromatic windows are alright, but they let in far too much light for my taste (see the last image). It's harder to sleep than with traditional blinds that can be pulled down. I suspect in the future they will either do both or have to dramatically improve the technology.

While the inside is nice, the real stunner is the wings. These things are amazing. They move like they are almost organic and on lift off, the bend in the wing is pretty dramatic. Most other wings are pretty stiff, but these flex in the wind and you can see them curl as the lift starts pushing the plane upwards. Check out this video of what I'm talking about.. (not mine). Pretty exciting to see them in action in person!

Bird Strike! Alaska Air Flight 349 on 2014-11-14

Well, that was interesting. Last Friday, I went back up to Seattle. Or at least I tried to do. Unfortunately for me, we ended up turning around due to our plane hitting a bird. Nothing serious happened, but it still was a potentially dangerous situation. Thankfully, our pilots were able to land the plane safely and get us to Seattle -eventually. Here's the story.

From the start, the flight looked like it would be a good one: The plane was on time, we left on time, and the estimate with the winds was that were going to arrive early. It was, sadly, not to be. As we were climbing over San Francisco there was a slight drop in power from the engines and the plane leveled off. At fist, I didn't think much of it since the bay area is a crowded airspace and maybe we needed to level off to allow for other traffic.

However, then we turned east and started heading to Sacramento, I started to have my doubts. Pretty soon we were headed towards San Jose and it was pretty clear that there was something wrong. After about 10 minutes, the captain came on and told us that we hit a bird and that his controls were not working correctly...

...but that the First Officer's controls were fine (Maybe lead with that next time!). The pilots had the plane under control and set us down in Oakland with about 20-30 minutes of total time in the air. Emergency responders were out ready to great us if something went wrong, but the landing was smooth and we taxied into the gate on our own power. Everyone on board was calm about the situation, if a little annoyed at having plans abruptly changed.

What actually happened is that the bird took out the Pitot tubes, which are important for a lot of different functions on the plane, including air speed indication and supplying information to the engine controller. The Air France crash in 2009 into the Atlantic was attributed to a malfunction in the Pitot tubes. Thankfully, there was another undamaged set on our plane that kept everything running smoothly.

The truth is that Alaska did a pretty good job handling the delay. As soon as we were down, they were ready to hand out a meal voucher ($12, but sadly limited options like Chili's Too) and an apology card. The card promised to be back in touch with a discount off of a future flight. In the end, that was a $300 voucher, which isn't bad considering I only paid $186 for the ticket to Seattle. They arranged for a replacement plane, which did get us to Seattle... but at 2AM the next morning. On the other hand, they told us about the replacement plane within 15 minutes of landing and disembarking the original damaged plane. Overall, good job of handling the situation!