Alaska Airlines has just announced 18 new routes for this upcoming winter season, which the airline describes as offering service to “sun-soaked international destinations and winter wonderland retreats.” The destinations as such make sense, though the city pairs are in some cases a bit surprising…
In this post:
Details of Alaska Airlines’ new winter routes
For this upcoming winter season, Alaska Airlines will be adding 18 new routes. All of the routes are launching in December or January, though their travel windows differ significantly. Let’s go over the details, sorted by the start date of each route. Alaska Airlines will fly:
- Daily from Fresno (FAT) to Guadalajara (GDL) between December 3, 2024, and February 12, 2025, using a Boeing 737
- 5x weekly from Boise (BOI) to Bozeman (BZM) between December 19, 2024, and March 17, 2024, using an Embraer E175
- Daily from Boise (BOI) to Orange County (SNA) year-round, using an Embraer E175
- Daily from Los Angeles (LAX) to Kelowna (YLW) between December 19, 2024, and March 17, 2025, using an Embraer E175
- Daily from San Diego (SAN) to Reno (RNO) between December 19, 2024, and April 21, 2025, using an Embraer E175
- 3x weekly from San Diego (SAN) to Vail (EGE) between December 20, 2024, and March 16, 2024, using an Embraer E175
- 3x weekly from Seattle (SEA) to Vail (EGE) between December 20, 2024, and March 16, 2024, using an Embraer E175
- 1x weekly from San Francisco (SFO) to Liberia (LIR) between December 21, 2024, and May 10, 2025, using a Boeing 737
- 1x weekly from Seattle (SEA) to Liberia (LIR) between December 21, 2024, and May 11, 2025, using a Boeing 737
- 5x weekly from Sacramento (SMF) and Los Cabos (SJD) between January 6 and April 21, 2025, using a Boeing 737
- Daily between Sacramento (SMF) and Tucson (TUS) between January 6 and April 21, 2025, using an Embraer E175
- 4x weekly between Sacramento (SMF) and Orlando (MCO) between January 6 and April 21, 2025, using a Boeing 737
- 3x weekly between Boise (BOI) and Orlando (MCO) between January 7 and March 25, 2025, using a Boeing 737
- 4x weekly between New York (JFK) and Puerto Vallarta (PVR) between January 8 and April 20, 2025, using a Boeing 737
- 1x weekly between Sacramento (SMF) and Puerto Vallarta (PVR) between January 11 and April 19, 2025, using a Boeing 737
- 1x weekly between Kansas City (MCI) and Cancun (CUN) between January 18 and June 7, 2025, using a Boeing 737
- 1x weekly between Kansas City (MCI) and Puerto Vallarta (PVR) between January 25 and April 5, 2025, using a Boeing 737
- 1x weekly between St. Louis (STL) and Puerto Vallarta (PVR) between January 25 and April 5, 2025, using a Boeing 737
These new flights are expected to go on sale as of later today (on July 10, 2024). This latest announcement follows Alaska having just recently announced new service to other destinations in Mexico, including La Paz (LAP) and Monterrey (MTY).
What makes these Alaska route additions interesting
Admittedly the airline industry has changed a lot since the start of the pandemic. As people started to travel again in 2021 or so, we saw legacy carriers add more point-to-point leisure routes, which was previously the turf of ultra low cost carriers. This latest expansion from Alaska very much aligns with that concept.
Back in the day, Alaska was pretty focused on primarily operating service from its hubs. In this case, we’re seeing a single new route added from Seattle, while a lot of the other service is in markets you would’ve never expected to see Alaska.
Kansas City to Cancun? Boise to Orlando? New York to Puerto Vallarta? Those are some interesting adds that you’d ordinarily expect to see from other airlines, but not Alaska.
Is Alaska basically maxed out when it comes to expansion at its biggest hubs? Or is there only so much leisure tourism that an airline can get out of a single market in the winter season?
I’m sure these routes will perform reasonably well, since people do like escaping their home climate in winter. However, these routes mostly don’t really tap into any strengths of Alaska’s, but rather the airline is just hoping for travelers to learn about the routes through online travel agencies, and book that way.
Bottom line
Alaska Airlines has just announced an expansion for winter, including adding 18 routes to both sunshine and snow destinations. It’s common for airlines to add seasonal leisure oriented routes, though what makes this so interesting is that some of these city pairs are downright random, and don’t really play into any of Alaska’s strengths.
Is there demand for a once weekly flight from Kansas City to Puerto Vallarta? Yeah, probably. But would we have expected Alaska to be the carrier operating that? Probably not…
What do you make of Alaska’s winter expansion?
Im really surprised here beause as you noted most of these are not hubs for them. JFK to Mexico?
How do any of the new flights help people in Alaska? Why not more flights originating from Anchorage to other parts of the US? For example: Anchorage to Denver or Minneapolis?
Where are direct flights from Anchorage to Honolulu, Kona,Hilo, Maui & Kauai.
These are very profitable to your airlines.
Please consider bringing these direct flights back all year round.
Wondering if and when Alaska will offer daily flights to and from SJC to MFR?? There must be a need for Bay Area to Southern Oregon direct! I've written to Alaska prior with no responses.
Seems like they might focus instead on adding routes flyers have been requesting for years like a flight from Medford, OR to SoCal!!
Looks like Alaska is bailing out of OAK in favor of making SMF a mini-hub.
Much easier for a lot of folks to drive to SMF vs OAK if they live between these two cities.
However, over the longer haul, Alaska is losing focus because they don't have the scale like the big 4 to do specialized routes. And why is their stock going down when the markets keep going up and this is the "busy" time of the year.
Nice to see Alaska add SAN-EGE (Vail) to the offerings as it continues to grow it strong ski destination presence out of SAN, adding to existing winter seasonal service to Bozeman, Steamboat Springs/Hayden and Jackson Hole that are without competition. Alaska has a strong E175 base at SAN, and as one of the largest cities in the US by population that is not a major hub for any airline due to airport size and geographic...
Nice to see Alaska add SAN-EGE (Vail) to the offerings as it continues to grow it strong ski destination presence out of SAN, adding to existing winter seasonal service to Bozeman, Steamboat Springs/Hayden and Jackson Hole that are without competition. Alaska has a strong E175 base at SAN, and as one of the largest cities in the US by population that is not a major hub for any airline due to airport size and geographic location, Alaska provides a lot of nonstop options to secondary cities in California or along the west coast that create quick, easy flights without needing to waste hours connecting in LAX, SFO or LAS.
Sounds like the Eurowings Discover strategy tbh.
I wonder if their new routes are complementary routes with AA. Since Alaska is part of Oneworld, it would not make sense for them to operate routes that AA does unless extremely high demand. The connectivity between AA and Alaska could be one reason.
I wonder if the pending HA merger has anything to with these new routes.
Granted most are with E175s, but maybe with the merger there will be some excess 737s as they rationalize the West Coast-HI route network (using HA planes to fly SFO/LAX/SAN/SJC-HNL/OGG).
Help me understand the economics behind a 1x/week flight?
low risk improved use of assets during fairly narrow demand periods. Cumulatively, a bunch of these could add up to a significant amount of additional revenue which AS has not gotten during the winter and yet realizes it needs to get in order to be consistently profitable year round - right from their exec statements.
As a 75K living in Florida, I'm excited for these. I need to go to SMF at some point next year and will most likely do it in April now that I can take a nonstop.
Boise to SNA yearly makes a lot of sense; I can see them increasing service to 2x daily.
Targeting PVR makes a lot of sense. It's super popular on the West Coast, and I think the seasonal routes will be successful since those markets don't currently have nonstop options. UA flies EWR, but that's not a substitute for JFK.
Interesting to see the Vail flights. I live in SF, so would be nice to see...
Boise to SNA yearly makes a lot of sense; I can see them increasing service to 2x daily.
Targeting PVR makes a lot of sense. It's super popular on the West Coast, and I think the seasonal routes will be successful since those markets don't currently have nonstop options. UA flies EWR, but that's not a substitute for JFK.
Interesting to see the Vail flights. I live in SF, so would be nice to see EGE service from here, but SEA and SAN makes sense since they'll have no competition. Vail is the largest ski destination that AS doesn't serve - they serve Bozeman, SLC/Park City, Jackson, Reno, Sun Valley. I'd love to see them serve Aspen but they don't have small enough aircraft nor do they really have the client market for that. SEA-ASE or SAN-ASE would be awesome.
Guess Alaska sees opportunity for point to point leisure markets, kind of like Allegiant.
Some do appear pretty random superficially like Fresno to Guadalajara but I’m guessing some type of analysis has has been done on demand and past bookings.
it will be interesting to see how long this lasts. Or if it becomes a new part of Alaska’s business model to have a significant portion of flights move away from hubs.
And if anyone...
Guess Alaska sees opportunity for point to point leisure markets, kind of like Allegiant.
Some do appear pretty random superficially like Fresno to Guadalajara but I’m guessing some type of analysis has has been done on demand and past bookings.
it will be interesting to see how long this lasts. Or if it becomes a new part of Alaska’s business model to have a significant portion of flights move away from hubs.
And if anyone at Alaska is listening - we here in southern Oregon would love flights from MFR to SAN and SFO (or OAK/SJC)
Fresno to Guadalajara is for the farm workers heading home for the holidays. IIRC AM also serves this market
theyre not all farm workers... in fact many are mexican american citizens visiting family
As an example of another hub add, few weeks ago AS also announced seasonal daily PDX-MSY; I was surprised they didn't re-up that in this announcement.
As a Reno based flyer, I’m most excited to see our 2x daily to LAX returning in October and lasting through the entirety of the current schedule. We used to have 5x daily on AA Eagle, but now only runs it during Burning Man.
Good to see AS give us back our connectivity to OW partners for international travel through what is arguably the best OW hub on the planet. Especially after being resigned to connect through DFW or SEA the last couple years.
As an old Alaskan that thinks Alaska Airlines is the greatest, I worry about them getting spread too thin. We need their pilots in the 49th state, best around!
"In this case, we’re seeing a single new route added from Seattle." There are actually two--EGE and LIR. But point taken that many of these routes are not hub-based.
FAT - GDL is interesting. FAT is my current "home airport" somewhat by default. I just dropped my neighbors off at FAT and they took one of the Y4 flights to GDL. All the Y4 and AM flights on that route, I would argue, are terribly timed: "red-eyes" that are only 3 - 4 hours long, leaving somewhere between 0000 and 0200 and arriving around 0400 to 0600.
Apparently, most of the Mexicans in...
FAT - GDL is interesting. FAT is my current "home airport" somewhat by default. I just dropped my neighbors off at FAT and they took one of the Y4 flights to GDL. All the Y4 and AM flights on that route, I would argue, are terribly timed: "red-eyes" that are only 3 - 4 hours long, leaving somewhere between 0000 and 0200 and arriving around 0400 to 0600.
Apparently, most of the Mexicans in this area are from around the Jalisco/Michoacan area and there's actually a Mexican consulate in Fresno, believe it or not.
I do find it somewhat interesting (and quite a bit frustrating) that there are no direct flights (nor have there ever been, as far as I know) from FAT to MEX, which would offer much greater domestic (Mexico), Latin America, South America, Central America, even European connectivity...
There are December fights between FAT to MEX most years.
In December there are up to 6 fights leaving to Mexico on some nights from 3 different airlines. Volaris, Viva and Aeromexico
Ben's assessment that these point to point routes are interesting is correct. AS probably does not have the markets to add from its strength markets because the PNW is summer-strong but winter weak. AS is trying to increase its winter revenue and these make sense both for ski and sun destinations.
Whether they move the needle, esp. since many of the routes are not even daily, remains to be seen but you gotta give them credit for looking for opportunities.
My home airport is BOI, the BOI expansion makes sense. The area exploded in the last few years and the route network is catching up.
BOI to BZM will be cool given all the winter ski traffic. No idea how successful it will be given it's easier to bring your car to ski rather than pack everything into checked bags and drag everything to the airport.
BOI to SNA is probably a no...
My home airport is BOI, the BOI expansion makes sense. The area exploded in the last few years and the route network is catching up.
BOI to BZM will be cool given all the winter ski traffic. No idea how successful it will be given it's easier to bring your car to ski rather than pack everything into checked bags and drag everything to the airport.
BOI to SNA is probably a no brainer given every other person here seems to travel to CA pretty regularly.
BOI to MCO will be the only flight from BOI to the southern east coast other than ATL with Delta.
It would be interesting to see how these planes were used pre-pandemic. I would imagine they may have been used for business type routes out of Alaska hubs. With volumes down, the planes need to be used somewhere.
FAT-GDL is served by Aeromexico - they're cutting frequencies this winter. Probably why they're doing it
It is really interesting to see AS lean in so hard on the AA OneWorld strength in the cities like MCI/STL and, to a lesser extent, JFK...
I'm curious how they'll do with the routes. Goes without saying any AAdvantage member in those cities can just get AA miles and get upgraded as though it was an AA flight. I'm curious how much that went into Alaska's calculation for these routes.
I think the MCI-CUN is especially interesting as right now it’s served seasonally by AA with a 738 and F9 with a 321. Makes me wonder if AA will continue to operate that service or pull out and leave it to AS - I’d think there’s demand enough for 3 flights and I don’t think F9’s is daily. STL too although I am not sure which equipment they use. MCI is definitely lacking in winter...
I think the MCI-CUN is especially interesting as right now it’s served seasonally by AA with a 738 and F9 with a 321. Makes me wonder if AA will continue to operate that service or pull out and leave it to AS - I’d think there’s demand enough for 3 flights and I don’t think F9’s is daily. STL too although I am not sure which equipment they use. MCI is definitely lacking in winter warm-weather destinations.
As a Kansan who enjoys Cancun, I’m excited although the issues there lately are concerning.
The JFK-PVR is downright shocking, but I guess if they have frames to spare this winter may as well give it a try.
BOI to MCO is pretty easy to understand as Alaska is looking to be the dominant player in one of America's fastest growing markets (which happens to be in its back yard). Others are quite interesting, FAT and SMF to tropical vacation destinations - probably a great idea to try as both are (again) somewhat underserved markets within their home region.
I don't get the MCI-CUN, STL-CUN and especially JFK-CUN routes though. For one...
BOI to MCO is pretty easy to understand as Alaska is looking to be the dominant player in one of America's fastest growing markets (which happens to be in its back yard). Others are quite interesting, FAT and SMF to tropical vacation destinations - probably a great idea to try as both are (again) somewhat underserved markets within their home region.
I don't get the MCI-CUN, STL-CUN and especially JFK-CUN routes though. For one thing, they haven't a prayer gaining traction on that flight out of JFK. No way. And the other two are pretty random routes. The only wau I see those succeeding is with deep discounting, which is (as we all know) bad for business.
Some of it does not surprise me, I've felt that PVR is criminally underserved from the middle and east of the US, especially only having a once weekly flight from NYC outside of the Christmas holiday. Yes, it's not as popular as Cancun, but it does get a fair share of travelers, especially gays who flock there throughout the winter (large gay scene downtown with multiple gay beach clubs, plenty of gay bars, etc).
UA flies EWR-PVR throughout the winter season. Sometimes 2 x daily.
They are showing as Saturday only outside of the Christmas season. What weeks between Jan 7 and April are they daily?
I noticed there are finally some new flights from Sacramento to leisure locations however they still don't have the Sacramento to Maui flight back on again after so many years of having it the discontinued it because of Southwest competition and now Southwest doesn't regularly fly non-Stop from Sacramento to Maui so it could be time for them to bring it back