Review of Alaska Airlines flight from San Francisco to San Diego in Economy

INtroduction

Greetings everyone! When looking for flights back to my home base of Salt Lake City from San Francisco I had many nonstop options to choose from. Already between UA,DL & AS have combination of about 14 nonstop flight options between the two cities daily. But when looking through my records I had found an ecredit from Alaska that were about to expire so I decided to choose using it with them when purchasing this ticket. When looking through options on the Alaska website I found that they had two options for the same price, one was a nonstop flight leaving in the afternoon and the other was a morning flight via San Diego to Salt Lake City. Ultimately my inner avgeek self chose the latter as it was including another fun segment which I can review about :)
On the day of flight I arrived from the airport hotel to terminal with no issues. However it was 3:30am and I started to question my decision on choosing this early morning flight as I was still very jet lagged having come from Europe the day before and got almost no sleep. So I stopped looking at the clock and jumped straight in for the travel day ahead ? 

San Francisco airport

Here's a look at the Alaska checkin desks in Terminal 2 at SFO. I had checked in online and had a mobile boarding pass so I made my way straight to security. Unfortunately, from being so jet lagged I had forgotten to stop by the self kiosks and print a paper boarding pass for my collection but oh well.. 

Thanks to my TSA precheck I made it through quick in about 10 minutes. However the same can't be said to the people going through the regular line as it seemed to spill into the check in area.  

Made it to the gate with about 1.5hr to spare before boarding. So I sat in one of the red comfy chairs and watched some YouTube ?

Before boarding started there was an announcement requesting any volunteers to checkin carryon bags as this was an almost full flight. I thought about it and said why not since I am making a connection in San Diego and wouldn't have to worry about hauling around until I arrived in SLC. 

Boarding started on time and my ticket being main cabin I was assigned group D.

Some information about my plane:
Flight number: AS3426
Aircraft: Embraer E175LR
Registration: N189SY
Delivered: January 2017 

The flight

Since my fare allowed for seat selection, I opted for seat 20D for it's good window alignment (thanks to aerolopa!). I love flying on Embraer jets however they are notorious for having horrible window alignment unfortunately. 

My view for the next 1.5h down the west coast this morning :)

Legroom was great especially since I stowed my personal item on the bins above for this short flight since I figured that I could deal without. 

Air Canada Boeing 737 MAX 8 pushing back for it's departure to Toronto (YYZ)

An Air Canada Jazz Mitsubishi CRJ700 departing shortly for Vancouver (YVR)

Boarding was complete and the two seats in front of me were the only empty seats on the flight. Making it a flight load of 97% 

You can enjoy the whole pushback, taxi & takeoff in the video below:

Alaska B737 MAX 9 departing soon for New York (JFK)

We'll we departing off runway 28L

Downtown San Francisco in the distance

Reached cruising altitude of 31,000ft

A look at the tray table & seat back contents

For inflight entertainment Alaska has also went the route with AA to only offer it through personal devices. Since this was a regional jet I obviously wouldn't expect any seatback IFE (the only airline I could think of that had seatback IFE's on Embraer jets are AC if I remember correctly). However though the entertainment options that AS offered was very impressive and contained a moving map which I was happy about :) 

About 30 minutes into flight the onboard service was about to begin.

The flight attendants on this flight were very friendly and upbeat. Since this was a relatively short flight only drinks were offered and no snack. I was really craving a coffee and orange juice (since I haven't had any breakfast) and the flight attendant gladly gave me both. ? 

I also didn't know AS also offered Starbucks coffee like Delta does. You learn something new everyday ;)

Managed to capture a passing Southwest b737-800 heading to San Jose 

Santa Cruz Island

Ventura & Oxnard

We began out initial descent

Flight attendants preparing cabin for landing

Anyone also enjoys cloud surfing ?

Unfortunately today will be landing into a gloomy San Diego this morning.

Here's the full descent & landing video: 

We'll be landing on runway 27

Unfortunately condensation started to build up on my window once we exited the runway

arrival

We arrived on time and even a bit ahead of schedule.

One last look at our E175, thanks for the ride!

This concludes the first of two leg series between San Francisco & Salt Lake City. Thanks for Reading!