Alaska Airlines Review

This is a post to an incident that occurred on 08.14.09, Flight Number 84 outbound from Sea-Tac, Washington to San Jose, California. My Wife and I chose this flight because we were traveling with our 19-month old son and this flight was the best choice, taking into account his sleeping and eating schedule. This flight was delayed of 3 and ½ hours due to the absence of the scheduled pilots and/or flight crew needed to take us to our destination. I understand that sometimes a part on the aircraft might need to be replaced or that the weather will affect the departure time, however waiting on qualified pilots to report to duty is unacceptable to me. I understand that the pilots had their own flight problems getting to Sea-Tac, but honestly, I don't care about that. Having a standby crew at the airport or local pilots "On Call" for just those sorts of situations should be standard operating procedure for any sort of business with deadlines to meet. Since there was no backup plan to avoid such a delay (probably due to budget cuts or just plain oversight) our flight was delayed and what should have been the start of a great vacation was a stressful, prolonged wait around a busy airport.
Not only is the airport the last place I'd like to entertain my little boy for an extra few hours while part of the Alaskan Airline flight crew try to be at their scheduled place of duty, but even the gate staff on hand were short answered and rude. When told that we were going to be delayed, the gate crew made an announcement that since we were delayed, we could come up to the gate and receive our complimentary 1000 free air miles. Not knowing much about air miles myself, I walked back up to the gate and stood in line to receive my paperwork for those flight miles. Since my Wife is the one that handles our fly miles, once I returned to my seat I asked her how many miles it would take to use for our typical trip to San Jose, CA? Her answer was 20,000 to 40,000 for each person - At this point not only did I feel insulted by such a feeble gesture, but the fact that I had stood in yet another line to receive those 1000 miles was ridiculous to me and not worth it.
As of right now I'm only hoping that a family that is planning on taking a trip, will read my review and decide to use another Airline, which is what I am planning to do for all future flights...Alaska Airlines, you can keep your air miles.