Yes, we were disappointed by Alaska’s version of flying between Hawaii and the west coast, in our case to Seattle.

Yesterday’s Hawaiian flight back was a wholly different experience, service at a far higher level.

Unlike Alaska’s crew, which mostly disappeared after the meal service in first class, the Hawaiian crew yesterday stopped by repeatedly to check if I needed anything, to offer more drinks (I stopped after two), and generally to make sure I was doing okay. Meda had the same treatment from the flight attendant working the other aisle.

The meal was very good, and it came with salt and pepper folded inside a tiny paper aloha shirt! Dessert and a glass of Courvoisier followed.

Although Hawaiian doesn’t provide for pre-ordering a preferred meal from a list of options, we had not problem getting what we wanted. Interestingly, we were able to select our meal in advance on the Alaska Air flight to Seattle the week before.

We had a moment of panic after figuring out that the originally scheduled aircraft, a 737, had been replaced by new and quite luxurious 787-9. But in the change, our seats moved from 4A & 4B to 4C and 4G. We worried that the new seat assignments meant that we wouldn’t be sitting together. But as soon as we boarded, I saw that the configuration up front was 1-2-1, with each seat in its own enclosure. So Meda and I were seated next to each other, and could lower the divider between our seats. The only “problem,” an a minor one, was that the seats were offset by 90 degrees (the one on the left 45 degrees to the left, and the one on the right about 45 degrees to the right. But that was a very minor problem, given the comfort of the seating and the attentiveness of the flight attendants.

The question is whether the merge airline will emulate Hawaiian’s high level of in-flight service, or drop down to the kind of service we had on the Alaska flight to Seattle.