Originally Posted by
JacksonFlyer
Oh please.....don't take away the SBA route. My guess was that it would go to something like a SEA-SJC-SBA routing. I have taken the SEA-SBA quite a few times on varying days, Thur-Sun/Mon and as I have said before I never have seen an "empty" flight and many times it has been sold out where I had to change dates. I have absolutely no idea about the economics of this route but I have to believe there is a market in that south-central coastal area that serves from Santa Maria to Ventura/Oxnard (assuming folks there do not want to drive through LA). It also wasn't a cheap flight as well. I don't know as my experience is anecdotal and RASMguy has the facts. I would really hate to see this route go away.
Santa Barbara is a strange market - there's a big enough surrounding population (400K in SB county plus 800K nearby in Ventura county) that you would think it would support more flights, but maybe the fact it's so close to LAX and BUR makes it tough to compete. I could definitely see it going to a one stop on Q400s through SJC but to me that would be taking the flight away! Didn't they do that to SBA-PDX? First make it a one stop in SJC or somewhere, then cut it completely?