United Airlines Ends Paine Field Flights

By: Ben Schlappig

Updated: June 9, 2023
Published: July 19, 2021

24 comments

In 2019 we saw Paine Field-Snohomish County Airport (PAE) open a passenger terminal, allowing airlines to launch commercial service to the airport. Seattle Tacoma International Airport (SEA) was growing at a fast pace, so the intent of the airport was to give North Sound residents a convenient second airport in Everett.

This airport is also pretty cool for avgeeks, as it’s home to Boeing, so there are some awesome plane spotting opportunities from the terminal.

Well, unfortunately things aren’t looking particularly good for commercial service at the airport.

In this post:

United Airlines ending Paine Field flights in October 2021

United Airlines has announced that it’s ending flights to Paine Field as of October 5, 2021, due to “demand trends.” For some context:

United Airlines first launched flights to Paine Field in early 2019, initially flying to both Denver and San Francisco
Then in early 2020 the airline ended the Paine Field to San Francisco route, while now the airline is ending its Paine Field to Denver route
This service all along has been operated by United Express, using Embraer 175 regional jets
At this point United is consolidating Seattle-area service at Seattle Tacoma International Airport, which offers service to most United hubs

United Airlines is pulling out of Paine Field

Passenger service doesn’t seem to be going well

Initially when it was announced that Paine Field would open to passenger flights, there was a limit of 24 passenger flights per day. Alaska, Southwest, and United, all immediately announced plans to launch flights to the airport, locking other airlines out of airport.

Unfortunately it has all been downhill from there, in the sense that the airport is down to just one airline:

Southwest initially announced plans to launch five daily flights to Paine Field, but canceled flights before launch
United initially announced plans to launch six daily flights to Paine Field; now United is pulling out altogether
Even pre-pandemic, there were slots available at the airport, yet no airlines were interested in adding service

Fortunately Alaska seems to be doing reasonably well at Paine Field:

Alaska plans to operate 13 daily flights from Paine Field as of the fall of 2021
Alaska plans to operate 18 daily flights from Paine Field as of the spring of 2022

Alaska Airlines’ planned Paine Field routes

Presumably the airline could get even more slots if it wanted, given that there’s no other service at the airport. I also can’t help but wonder if Alaska is actually doing well at Paine Field, or has just maintained service since it would be strange for the “hometown” airline to fully drop service at the airport.

Furthermore, while adding routes in spring 2022 sounds great, that’s potentially nearly a year from now, and a lot can change. There would be merit to Alaska announcing a route it’s not necessarily committed to, just to keep other airlines away.

Even with Alaska adding routes out of the airport, one can’t help but wonder how the economics are working out for the airport. All of Alaska’s flights at Paine Field are operated by Horizon regional jets, featuring 76 seats — that’s not a lot of daily passengers.

Alaska Airlines is the only remaining airline at Paine Field

Bottom line

Paine Field’s new passenger terminal opened in 2019, and it was supposed to usher in a new era of airline service for those living in the North Sound. Unfortunately that hasn’t worked out all that well up until now — Southwest never ended up flying to Paine Field, while United is now ending service as well.

Alaska has maintained service at the airport, but has also modified its route network, clearly using a trial-and-error approach. While there’s a significant population in the area, the Paine Field passenger experiment doesn’t seem to be going as well as hoped.

What’s your take on United pulling out of Paine Field? Why do you think it’s not working out?

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Brian LeHuquet Guest

July 20, 2021, 11:18 am

Living just north of Everett and flying to AZ a few times a year leaves us with a choice, drive to SEA and add 2 hrs drive time and parking costs to your trip, or add $200 they charge to fly the extra 5 minutes to PAE. Usually SEA wins in that scenario and that's unfortunate as I even work on Paine field. Also, most people I speak to beg for flights from PAE to ANC. You would think Alaska would have been the first destination from Everett.

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IanC Guest

July 19, 2021, 10:18 pm

A big part of why PAE struggles in my mind is the combination and mutually reinforcing factors of being dependent on Everett-originating O&D (a lot of which will still go to SEA for more flight options as others point out) and limited transit options. I'm a UW student from California and SFO/SJC-PAE on many occasions tends to be significantly cheaper than SFO/SJC-SEA on both UA and AS. I would be perfectly happy to fly into PAE as it's roughly a similar distance to the university and doesn't have SEA's crowds. But since I have the option of light rail to SEA, it wins every time over having to figure out a way to get to/from PAE without a car.

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Carl Guest

July 19, 2021, 9:23 pm

There is no transit at the Paine Field terminal. There are no car rentals at the Paine Field terminal. The only parking lot is the one operated by the airport and it is expensive. There are no security lines but the people staffing security have so much time that they are very picky. Most destinations have one flight a day or at most two. What could possibly go wrong? While the terminal is nice, the drawbacks outweigh the terminal by far.

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Brian Guest

July 19, 2021, 3:22 pm

Bring back Portland OR ..please

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James22 Member

July 19, 2021, 3:17 pm

Live in Bellingham, and sad to see UA leave Paine. Was also sad to see AS cut some of the routes out of PAE and hopefully as they say those will be restored the next 6-8 months. As others have pointed out, flying out of BLI isn't that great. You can fly on Allegiant (not usually in my top 10 options to do), or fly on Horizon to Seattle and connect from there. Problem with that is it isn't cheap to add that leg to/from Seattle. I'm excited though as SWA is coming to BLI and will start flying to LAS and OAK. Love the options that would give for us to fly elsewhere without driving to or connecting in SEA. Not first class, but for some of our trips I'll gladly take the convenience to fly into my home airport. I am sad UA is pulling out as we've used them the past couple times flying to CZM, with the one connection in DEN. It was cheaper and easier than flying out of SEA for us. Of course, now that the border is opening up, we'll go back to flying out of YVR to CZM. First class tickets were usually $150+ cheaper than out of SEA when flying to CZM. And YVR is only an hour or so away from our house (barring traffic....we have Nexus, so border isn't much of an issue).

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