I am a big fan of JetBlue since I took my first flight from Seattle to Boston on them a couple of months ago. I was bragging about them on the way to the airport this morning. We found much better flight times between PDX and Boston than the flights from/to SeaTac so we were pretty pleased. I mentioned this to the gate agent before I got on the plane. He said, “Too bad this is just a seasonal route. Next week is the last flight until next season.” Really too bad because it is a lot easier for us to get to PDX than to SeaTac (same distance, but way less traffic an hassle getting to PDX). Then, after I got on the plane I was going to take a picture of the refrigerator and the baskets with snacks in them that were available on the Seattle based flights. They did not exist on the smaller plane flying to/from Portland. To top it off, it turned out there is no power for laptops at the seats nor even a USB port to charge cell phones. Oh well. The gate agent said they were really considering adding the Portland/Boston flight a permanent one, but it is still a hard choice WITH NO REFRIGERATOR!
Day: August 26, 2018
I have flown in and out of Portland International Airport more than any other airport for my entire professional life. Honestly, PDX had lost its luster over the years as the Portland culture seemed to coarsen in lockstep with the aging of the quite famous PDX carpet. While the city of Portland and the State of Oregon maintain their unparalleled beauty, (well, that is true for the City of Portland, only if you do not look too close) the coarsening of the culture has not abated. That can not be said about PDX anymore. Most of my travel was pre-remodel and now they have the new carpet installed. It is a joy to fly in and out of here now. It is not really up to the level of our beloved RDU airport, but that is really just a regional airport so might not be a fair comparison and PDX is almost that good anyway.
After taking the first few flights since returning to the Pacific Northwest out of SeaTac airport to China, Boston, and Phoenix–a truly horrible airport situated in an impossible place–we have decided we will fly out of Portland whenever possible and only fly out of SeaTac when we need to see Kelly before or after the flight. The drive down to PDX is really beautiful and not even close to the horror of driving through Olympia/Tacoma/Seattle traffic. It is a whole lot easier to get to PDX from the north rather than the south, so we are grateful for that. too.