Flights – Omaha to Las Vegas (Allegiant)

Today’s flight (excuse that I couldn’t get a photo of the aircraft due to where the jet bridges were, so here’s a can of Coke) was Allegiant Air from Omaha to Las Vegas. Allegiant are a relatively cheap carrier with a reputation similar to Ryanair and I find them pretty similar, they’re reliable but not exactly customer service obsessed.

Incidentally, on the Coke issue, they’re $2 which seems to be good value and I noted that nearly everyone on board ordered something. Allegiant don’t serve hot meals, just pre-packaged snacks and drinks. The crew service is efficient and well managed and they completed four sweeps of the aircraft offering drinks and snacks.

Interestingly (just to me) this aircraft was an A-319, registration N313NV. This aircraft was from October 2004 until December 2017 operated by easyJet before Allegiant took it over.

Views from the aircraft. I was fortunate that the middle seat was free and I was allocated the window seat, so it was all sufficiently spacious. The flight was delayed for around 45 minutes in Omaha because of adverse weather conditions in Las Vegas, so they were trying to space the aircraft arrivals out.

The flight was also one of the most turbulent ridden that I’ve experienced and the aircraft landed at quite an angle. As a back story, the guy on my row was chatty and good humoured, but he hated Allegiant. He’s got a long history of flying and he said he only booked this flight because he was drunk. He claimed that the poor flying conditions were down to the flight crew, which is perhaps rather harsh. But their communication to passengers wasn’t great if I’m being honest.

We landed in Las Vegas just under one hour late, but that didn’t seem unreasonable given the weather conditions. Then it all went a bit wrong. As the airport was being hit by thunder and lightning the ramp staff didn’t want to be hit and so went inside into the dry. My flight correspondence on the same row as me blamed the unions and said that Americans needed to toughen up. I didn’t get involved.

What was meant to be a short delay for the ramp staff to come back turned into a 90-minute wait. Another Allegiant aircraft parked up next to us, stuck in a similar situation. Others planes seemed to be parking up, so I’m not exactly sure what was going on, but nonetheless it was a frustrating wait as it was never clear how long it would be. When the announcement we were moving was made it was performed by a cabin crew member rather than from the flight deck, which seemed unusual to me. However, the pilot was visible at the end of the flight in case anyone wanted to answer questions or be rude to him. As I was British I thanked him for a lovely flight.

Overall, I can’t really blame Allegiant for the delays, it was a cheap flight and they got me where I wanted to be in a reasonable time. And I was very pleased that they auto allocated me a window seat. I’d certainly consider using them again.