SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 12, 2001--Whether you call it the Mother of All Wedding Presents or the Mother of All Ironies, one thing is certain: Mark Graves' winning of an Alaska Airlines 737 (NYSE:ALK) for a Cinco de Mayo getaway to Cabo San Lucas with his fiance and 49 other friends and family members was one-in-a-million.

"Actually, it was closer to one-in-1.5-million," said Greg Latimer, who organized a sweepstakes promotion aimed at drawing attention to the ways Alaska has improved customer convenience via the Web and other technologies.

The grand prize? Private use of an Alaska Airlines 737-400 -- specially painted in dark blue with "Alaskaair.com" scripted on the sides -- for a Cinco de Mayo weekend in Los Cabos at the renown Hotel Finisterra.

And therein lies the irony of it all. Graves, from Friday Harbor, Wash., spends much of the year working within a proverbial stone's throw of the Hotel Finisterra. He's the captain of Linblad Excursion's MV Sea Bird, a 70-passenger cruise ship that operates in the Sea of Cortez.

In fact, Graves was piloting the Sea Bird outside Cabo when he was notified via satellite phone. "After I explained the prize," recalls Latimer, Alaska's manager of advertising and promotions, "there was a long pause, and then he simply muttered 'wow'."

"The more I think about it, the more amazed I am that I won," said Graves. "I'm getting married in late June, and this is going to be an incredible pre-wedding celebration. My fiance and I are having a ball telling our friends they get to go on this trip!"

Any Mileage Plan member who flew Alaska or Horizon Air between October 1 and December 15, 2000 was automatically entered. Each flight flown counted as a chance to win. Postcard entries were also included. Graves' name was chosen at random from more than 1.5 million total entries.

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air became the first U.S. carriers to sell tickets online in 1995 and in 1999 were the first U.S. carriers to allow customers to check in for flights online via the Internet. Together they serve 75 cities in the Lower 48, Alaska, Canada and Mexico, with more than 1,000 daily departures.

For more news and information, visit the Alaska Airlines Newsroom on the Internet at http://newsroom.alaskaair.com.

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