Alaska and Delta are continuing to go at it in Seattle in what can only be described as the biggest frenemy (or maybe now just enemy) battle of 2014. To (very) briefly recap, it got serious last year when Delta announced huge international expansion out of Seattle, which Alaska was justifiably excited about, since they were being tapped to provide the feed for that international service.
But it seems Delta had a bit of an epiphany, and said “hmm, why should we be outsourcing all this domestic flying to Alaska, when we could do it on our own?” So they’ve announced huge domestic expansion in Seattle, including to Fairbanks, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Vancouver, etc. Basically they’re going head-to-head with Alaska on just about every one of their “bread and butter” routes.
To get back at Delta a little bit, Alaska announced additional expansion in Salt Lake City, with additional nonstop service from Salt Lake City to four destinations, including Portland, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose.
Of course Delta wasn’t to be outdone, and yesterday announced new nonstop four times daily service between Seattle and San Jose, as well as a seasonal flight to Juneau and an additional seasonal frequency to Anchorage.
Delta Air Lines will add new daily nonstop flights to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport from San Jose International Airport and Juneau International Airport as well as an additional flight from Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, all beginning May 29, 2014. The new service will provide customers with convenient connections to the airline’s growing international network from Seattle.
Delta’s new and expanded Seattle service includes:
- Four new daily nonstop flights from San Jose, Calif.
- One new daily summer seasonal flight from Juneau, Alaska – a new city to Delta’s network
- One additional summer seasonal flight from Anchorage for a total of three daily nonstop flights
“The Pacific Northwest economy is one of the fastest-growing in the U.S., and a big part of why we’re adding domestic flights in support of our growing global gateway in Seattle,” said Mike Medeiros, Delta’s vice president – Seattle. “By next summer, we’ll offer more than 2,500 daily international seats as part of our 79 peakday departures to 25 destinations.”
Delta’s new service from San Jose will be operated by Delta Connection carrier SkyWest Airlines using 76-seat, two-class CRJ-900s. The airline’s new Juneau service as well as the additional Anchorage summer seasonal flight will be operated with a Boeing 737-800. Each aircraft is equipped with First Class and Economy Comfort seating as well as onboard Wi-Fi.
To illustrate, here are some of the key domestic routes added by Delta (in red) and Alaska (in black) the past two months:
Gotta wonder how much longer this will go on before they cut ties…
WN is jumping in to the fun, too. They have announced new service from both SAN and PDX. From SAN they will be adding flights to MCO, PDX and SEA - all routes served by AS.
It's getting hot in here.
The problem is that the more routes you overlap on with a competitor, the less likely the DOJ is going to let you go through with the merger (since obviously, any route you overlap on = a competitor goes away). If anything, DL making a major push in SEA makes a merger with AA, WN or UA more feasible than with DL...
Nah. Delta is just going to buy them! ;-)
Hmm. I've specu-guessed about this before, though I have no direct information on the subject: My guess is that Delta's real objective is to eventually acquire Alaska.
Lucky, the question is how much more money does Delta actually make off of outsourcing to sky west instead of the code share with Alaska? To someone like myself who is an outsider looking in it is six of one half a dozen the other...
Let DL and AS cut ties and then AS can strengthen their partnership!
what is sad about this is if they do cut ties where will we credit Delta flights we must take once in a while? This will be a reason to avoid Delta at all cost even on a paid ticket.