Thinking more I should really include Santa Rosa in this conversation to understand I guess.
The Santa Rosa-Petaluma metro population is roughly 500,000.
SF/East Bay/South Bay is nearly 7,000,000

Going forward traveling from SFO,OAK, or SJC to get to LA region,
I've got SFO-LAX, SFO-SNA, well that's all I can find.
From Santa Rosa, I got STS-BUR, STS-LAX, STS-ONT, and STS-SNA basically everywhere but Long Beach, a total of 8 flights on a summer weekday in 2026.

Now, maybe it's the Southwest strategy not using the Big Boy Airports. I can see with Midway, Hobby, and Love Field those old places are actually pretty close to the City Centers and convenient for a lot compared to the Big Boy out in the weeds.
But, Santa Rosa? It's on the extreme edge of the SF Bay Area if you even want to include it in there. 1-2+ hours for about 6.5 million of those people who are closer to SFO/OAK/SJC.

Can't compete at SJC?, last year Alaska had about 730,000 passengers there, a mere 7% of the overall traffic. The ENTIRE traffic of all airlines at STS was about 820,000.
Even if the gates were free at STS, does this make sense? Is Horizon's old CEO retired up there?(Bruce McCaw I actually like from his PacWest CART days...)