Alaska Airlines Flight 2199
As my loyal readers know, I had a minor car crash while in Mammoth Lakes last week. My car suffered some body damage, and a broken tie-rod. My car was taken to Mammoth Collision Repair, where they were going to fix the broken tie ride, and fix the body enough for me to drive my Escape home. However, due to stormy weather, they were unable to fix the car.
So, since I need to get back home so that I could be at work on Monday, I needed to find a way home. I first looked into renting a car from Enterprise in Mammoth. They charged $60/day to rent a car, but they tacked on an additional fee of $200 if I didn’t return it to the Mammoth Lakes Enterprise Location. So, it would have cost me $260 plus gas to rent a car to drive home.
The big news in the town of Mammoth Lakes last week was the fact that Horizon Air had just started air service into the Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH) I was curious what it would cost to fly home to San Diego. After logging onto Alaska Airline’s website, I discovered that I could fly from Mammoth to Los Angeles to San Diego for $182 (including all fees and taxes). On Friday Night, I purchased my plane ticket for a Saturday trip home.
I arrived at the new airport terminal around 3:20PM for the scheduled 4:05PM departure. However, the plane still had yet to arrive from LA. (It was scheduled to land around 3:15PM). When I checked in my bags, I found out that the flight left LAX at 3:25PM, and my flight likely wouldn’t leave until around 5PM. The delay wasn’t a big deal, except for the fact that the Mammoth Airport Terminal is kinda bare. There was not Wi-Fi (though, I’m told that there are plans for it to exist), no bar or TVs to keep waiting passengers entertained.
The airport security opened the secure terminal at around 3:45PM, and I was the first one it. Inside, the boredom continued. There were a few vending machines, a single male/female restroom and lots of seats. I started talking to one person, who worked for Good Morning America as a travel correspondent. Essentially, he was based out of Seattle, but traveled around the USA capturing pretty pictures of travel destinations. His piece on Mammoth (and other winter destinations) is scheduled to air on Jan. 10, 2009.
The Q400 from LAX landed in Mammoth at about 4:15PM, and the airport crew quickly went to work unloading all of the passengers and baggage. About 30 minutes later, everybody traveling to LAX had boarded the plane, and we were ready to depart.
Once boarded, I saw that the flight wasn’t very full. I’d guess that there were 30 passengers on the plane. (I think that it holds 78 people). We took off without issue, and the plane soared into a gorgeous sunset. We headed south over Bishop, flew over the high peaks in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, across the central valley, over LA and into LAX. The total flight time was about 55 minutes or so. The flight didn’t include any food, but apparently all Horizon Airlines flights alcoholic beverages are included in the ticket price. They featured Snow Cap Beer from Pyramid (which I don’t really like), so I enjoyed a nice glass of Red Wine on my way back.
The plane arrived at LAX without incident, and I had to hustle to grab a shuttle bus to the American Eagle Terminal for my flight to San Diego. Nothing too exciting happened on that final flight, but my bag wasn’t quite quick enough to make the connection. It was delivered to my house this morning.
Overall, the flight was enjoyable from Mammoth to LA. It’s much quicker than driving, cheaper than renting a car one-way and serves free beverages. However, I can see some problems. First, the Mammoth Airport Terminal is really boring. Hopefully they spruce things up for travelers stuck there because of poor weather conditions. Secondly, only one bag is allowed “for free” from Horizon. If you want to bring a bag of clothing, and a ski bag, be prepared to pony up an extra $25 (or more). Thirdly, living in San Diego, it would be really nice for a non-stop for San Diego to Mammoth for only $99!
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I came across this blog when doing a search for anyone else who got f-cked as bad as I did this past weekend. I was very excited when I learned that I could fly Horizon Airlines from San Diego to Mammoth (via American Eagle codeshare to LAX) for a mere $182 r/t. Several weeks ago, I booked flights for me and my fiance. Last Thursday morning, we boarded our flight to LAX. We had about an hour and a half layover, and then we heard the news…flight canceled due to bad weather in Mammoth. Everyone on the flight was issued a refund right at the counter at LAX, however, all of the people there originated at LAX, other than me and my fiance. They said since it was a codeshare airline, it would have to go through their accounting department before we could be refunded.
So we made the best of it, rented a car ($200) and drove to Mammoth (its only about an hour shorter drive than from San Diego). We had a great ski weekend (lots of snow), and headed back for LAX Sunday afternoon. We returned the car and boarded our 20-minute flight back to San Diego. Upon landing, we called Alaska Airlines Customer Service to find out about our refund. Turns out that even though it is the exact same cost to fly from San Diego to Mammoth as it is to fly from LAX to Mammoth, when it comes to refund, they break it up into $45 each way from San Diego to LAX and $45 from LAX to Mammoth.
Anyway, they only refunded a total of $92 for each ticket (price per ticket after taxes and fees was $228). So basically ended up paying about $750 (rental car, LAX flights, parking at airport in San Diego, a few tanks of gas, etc) and only getting $184 total back (2 tickets).
Also, the weather is pretty much always bad in Mammoth during the winter, and I found out the flights that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were all canceled. Basically, its not worth the hassle or the money to attempt flying to Mammoth.
If they thought ahead, they should have upgraded the Bishop Airport, and implemented a shuttle service between Bishop and Mammoth.
I’m sorry to hear your story. I’ve seen articles pretty much describing what you said.
While I’ve heard that Bishop is actually a more dangerous place to land when the weather is bad, I’m surprised that Horizon Air just doesn’t re-route the flight to Reno, and work with a shuttle bus company to bus people in. (It’s about a 2 hour drive from Reno to Mammoth, and the 395 only closes during the worst of the storms)
I hope that you had a good time in Mammoth!