Originally Posted by
metallo
I think these comments are spot on, particularly with regard to some of the STL-related AS nuances, including how they construct their ex-STL fares, which often doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and the overall attitude of STL locals, many of whom are perfectly happy taking one big vacation a year on WN. Hard to see how there would be any AS growth in STL in the near future, which is disappointing, because they've been a nice option for me with west coast flying, but also getting me back and forth to the Midwest when needed.
Granted I'm sure that AS doesn't want to dilute the local premium they can take on SEASTL with a bunch of flow traffic fares to the rest of the west coast, but they can't expect to build a spoke relying solely on the market they have the nonstop on. STL seems to be very price sensitive, and unfortunately is under the "WN is always the lowest fare" mentality. They will probably just default to going to the WN website, because the one other time that they went on expedia to check, Alaska was more expensive than everyone else.
As for me, even when traveling with the family (2 adults, 4 kids), without the AS flight to SAN, I won't even consider WN as an option....regardless of its a nonstop. UA is priced about the same if not lower than WN, so the default has been the STLSFOSAN routing. Oddly enough, SFOSTL was operating as a redeye this summer on mainline. The only other time this happened was 2016 on an E175.