Alaska Airlines’ Mexico City Failure

Again?? I’m in Oaxaca now and just went online to buy a flight from CDMX to Seattle by way of LAX. So irritating! I take this flight several times a year and it’s always full. This might be the final nail in the Alaska coffin for me. After I figure out what to use all these miles on.

now it is too hard to get an award ticket from mexico city to Shanghai/Hong Kong because of Alaska cancelling from mexico city to US flights.

I will miss the SAN - MEX route even though TIJ is relatively easy and cheap as others have said .. As a resident of downtown San Diego nothing beats the San Diego airport ! It felt like like private jet service on the Skywest operated equipment. I was happy to pay more for the better flight compared to a crammed 737 on a Mexican carrier with no mileage/ partner benefits .

Random comments: @Lucky ---> Yes, I'm quite surprised. I flew SFO-MEX r/t in December and, aside from a catering issue, had a great flight both there and back. @Ben L. ---> Yes, I too am surprised that WN doesn't fly to MEX out of California. @chub ---> I don't think it was AS that cut ties to AM...with DL's ownership stake, and their aggressive anti-AS stance, I'd be placing the blame at the feet of DL. @Markus ---> I fly, even though I can cross the border for free. I don't live in San Diego and can't just walk to TIJ. But I agree with @J -- flying SAN-Mex was a stupid decision. @CraigTPA ---> Yes, I would imagine DL owns all the rights to Northwest. @Paul T. ---> I agree with you to a certain extent. As a long time Virgin America elite, Alaska have done some things spectacularly well. However, since operating on a single ticket (i.e.: since VX formally ceased to exist), there seems to be an increasing number of missteps. As MVP Gold -- heck, as a customer, period! -- this has felt more like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and a function of one step forward, two steps back. Having had some contact with senior executives at AS, I've voiced some of this frustration to the "powers that be." My takeaway from those conversations is that AS was a little overwhelmed by both the complexity of the merger (think "Marriwood") and a definite desire to make it work...despite the hiccups and potholes along the way. (And those are painful, no doubt about it.) For myself, I'm willing to give them until 12/31/2019 -- by which not only should all the "bugs" be worked out, but the experience should be "fun" again, like it was on VX. If not, well.... @SH ---> *IF* AS continues along its current slide, then I will -- with regret -- probably switch to DL, despite the fact that I hate their heavy-handed pressure tactics against AS. (Yeah, I know, "it's business.") I just can't use points on Southwest to fly overseas, and jetBlue simply doesn't have a strong enough flight schedule out of the West Coast. C'est la vie...

I'm a bit surprised that AS is pulling out of MEX altogether, again, and after just a few months. I've flown this route often, even before they pulled out the first time in 2015. Seems there were always empty F class seats, which indicated to me a big gap in customer loyalty in this market. What doesn't make any sense, is that AS went back into this market, and with additional service from SAN and SFO, and didn't have effective plans to improve its' marketing and customer loyalty in CDMX. I already have ticket several more trips on AS and am impacted...and AS doesn't provide any information about reaccommodation or addressing how they will handle milage accrual to maintain 75k status..for me it's 8k miles each trip; not insignificant. I'm dissatisfied enough by their whiplash style marketing and route planning to defect and move over to DL using an elite status match. AS has some serious deficits with regard to global airline partners and this isn't helping. They tout relationships with BA, for example, but the highest tier AS customer can't even request an advance seat assignment on BA since AS isn't in part of One World. What gives AS?