According to David Boyce, our Alaska Airlines head of maintenance for the state of Alaska, this is what happened: This aircraft worked SEA-DCA-PDX-ANC yesterday on 11/30. The jumpseat was inop out of PDX to ANC with a MEL in the log book and DO NOT OCCUPY sign on the jumpseat. The plan was to fix it in ANC last night but the parts were not available. Today, December 1st, this aircraft flew to PHX and is coming back to be fixed tonight in ANC as the parts should be here.
This is a Catagory B MEL which has to be fixed within three days. This is a high priority MEL as the F/As are not in their jumpseats, the loss of revenue from the two First Class seats, and it looks bad to our customers. Please contact Ruth Ann, your local AFA officers, or your local Base Management Team if you have any further questions relating to this or any other safety related topic.
Thank you Ruth Ann for such quick action in finding out what was going on in this situation so we could share the information with our members.