Alaska Airlines 737 Economy Review: New York JFK to Puerto Vallarta (PVR)

Rating: 3/5 (Friendly crew but no entertainment on a 6 Hour Flight)

Route: JFK-PVR (depart 9:30AM arrive 3:00PM)

Price (Per Person): $566 roundtrip (economy “Main”)

Introduction

For the annual friend’s trip to Mexico to escape the cold, we were off to Mexico. Puerto Vallarta is a bit trickier to get to from the East Coast vs. the main Mexican tourist hubs like Cancun or Mexico City. For long weekend type trips like the one we were going on, I’m very against layovers to maximize time at destination and minimize the probability of issues.

Alaska is actually the only airline operating a nonstop service from NYC to Puerto Vallarta, which is surprising given how popular Puerto Vallarta is as a tourist destination. Jetblue used to operate a nonstop between JFK and PVR, but killed the route in 2024.

My guess is it’s a fairly seasonal route that’s hard to turn a consistent profit on, but hopefully Alaska keeps it on. Currently, the flight between JFK and PVR flies 4x weekly.

Alaska points are some of the most valuable points you can get your hands on (at least as far as easy partner awards go), so I chose to save my points here and just pay cash.

The flight was not cheap for economy, at $566 roundtrip. I used my Amex Platinum here, earning me 5x points for the purchase or 2,800 points. I value Amex points at 2 cents per point, so that’s $56 right there (10% off!). Or at least that’s what I tell myself. But point here being, it pays to be in the credit card game. Or else you’re paying for everyone else’s (my) rewards.

In this post, you’ll find:

1. Introduction
2. Alaska Experience at JFK
3. Seat & Flight Review
4. Conclusion

Alaska Experience at JFK

We arrived to JFK via Uber at around 8AM. Alaska uses Terminal 7, which was probably nice went it opened last century. It is no longer nice this century.

However, to its merit, it’s a fairly small terminal so no marathons required to get to your gate (looking at you, JFK Terminal 8).

Even with TSA precheck, security took 20 minutes because there was only one agent there. Must be those DOGE cuts? Sorry no politics. Probably bad for SEO.

After security, we walked the ~3 minutes to our gate.

Terminal 7 was fairly empty this morning. I assume it gets fairly busy during the afternoon and evening when the Europe / Asia flights head out. Terminal 7 services a fairly random group of domestic and international airlines, including Kuwait, ANA, Condor, Ethiopian, Icelandair, and a couple of others.

Seat & Flight Review

Boarding was fairly quick aboard today’s 737-900. At the time of writing, Alaska uses their 737-900 and 737-MAX9 interchangeably on the flight with little predictability, in case you prefer avoiding the Max. Especially given an Alaska MAX did lose a door midflight.

Anyways, true to the name of the blog, I did indeed book the Exit Row. This cost me an extra $36, which I feel like was a very fair price for a 6 hour flight.

One thing you’ll notice though… no IFE screens. This is fairly annoying for a 6 hour flight. I usually travel with my laptop and phone as a backup for entertainment but definitely prefer when airlines have entertainment screens so I can try out new shows / movies. Oh well. Not like I have another choice for nonstop flights between NYC and Puerto Vallarta.

They do have a network you can log into on your phone / tablet / laptop to watch movies or TV shows. Their selection was actually pretty good. Minus the sore neck from looking down.

Taxi at JFK this morning took about an hour since we had to go get de-iced on the de-icing pad. After the long taxi, we began our takeoff roll.

Food was not served on this flight (pushing it for a 6 hour flight). I purchased the snack box which was decent. The flight attendants were very friendly on this flight. In fact, they were so friendly that they forgot to charge me the $12 for this box. To be fair, not having a meal service on a 6 hour flight is kind of criminal. Even a crappy little wrap would do.

This actually happened to me on both my flight to and back from Puerto Vallarta. Hopefully Alaska revenue management is not reading this.

After what felt like a fairly long flight (always longer going west), we landed in sunny Puerto Vallarta.

Conclusion

All in all, this flight was very much mediocre. The service was good by US airline standards, but basically nothing was offered to customers in the way of food or entertainment for a 6 hour flight, which is not ideal. Given they were my only choice for this flight, it was fine. However, if I have a choice in the future, I wouldn’t choose Alaska unless they were significantly cheaper.