New Pacific Airlines Ceases Operations: No Surprise, But Strange Timing

I can’t say that I’m surprised, and if anything, it’s impressive that things lasted as long as they did…

New Pacific Airlines shuts down effective immediately

New Pacific Airlines (formerly known as Northern Pacific Airways) will be shutting down. View from the Wing shares the note from CEO Thomas Hsieh, who says “it is with a heavy heart that I’m announcing that we will be ceasing operations today,” and that “unfortunately, we are unable to continue to fund the losses in our business.”

He tells employees he’s “extremely proud of you and everything we have accomplished as New Pacific/Ravn Alaska,” and “thank you for your hard work, commitment, and being part of the team.”

For those not familiar, New Pacific had a fleet of four Boeing 757-200s, and the company’s plan was to sort of operate an Icelandair-style model between North America and Asia. The idea was to fly between points in North America and points in Asia via Anchorage (ANC).

The concept never took off, largely because the business model just didn’t make sense, and any chance the concept had was eliminated when Russian airspace was closed to US airlines.

To New Pacific’s credit (or something), in the summer of 2023, the airline did operate two regularly scheduled routes for a few months, which had nothing to do with the carrier’s initial business model. This included flying a couple of times weekly from Ontario (ONT) to both Nashville (BNA) and Reno (RNO).

That service didn’t last for long, and eventually the airline decided to end scheduled flights, instead, shifting to charter service. But anyway, none of this seemed set up to succeed, so I can’t say that I’m surprised by this. I feel bad for any New Pacific employees who lost their jobs, because that’s always sad. But beyond that… yeah, this was going to happen sooner or later.

What makes the timing of New Pacific’s shutdown strange

I guess this isn’t actually that surprising, but the timing here is very strange. We hadn’t really heard anything about New Pacific Airlines for around a year, since there weren’t any developments. Then a couple of weeks ago, Maldives-based Beond Airlines announced plans to expand globally, including launching an all-business class airline in the United States, in partnership with New Pacific.

Now, just a couple of weeks after that announcement, New Pacific has gone out of business. That’s certainly not a good look, because presumably New Pacific knew what things looked like a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately I can’t say I’m surprised, because Beond is only slightly less shady than New Pacific (like announcing in April 2025 that it would add 18 new destinations by 2026, when in reality, zero of those routes have been announced).

Bottom line

New Pacific Airlines is officially ceasing operations. The Alaska-based Boeing 757 operator initially wanted to sell tickets across the Pacific via Anchorage, with one-stop service between all kinds of city pairs. That concept never came to fruition, so the airline pivoted to flying from Ontario to Nashville and Reno (as one does).

That didn’t work out either, so then the airline switched to the charter business. That probably wasn’t the worst idea, but at that point it seemed like “too little, too late,” especially with the debt the company had accrued. Now the airline is ceasing operations, and that comes just weeks after it was announced that it would launch an airline in partnership with Beond.

What do you make of New Pacific finally ceasing operations?