Originally Posted by
archstenton
That's great for them
, they get to choose between 4 airports in LA. SJC has 0 options. OAK has 0 options. SFO has 2.
Why?
The City of San Jose alone is about the combined population of Sonoma and Marin Counties(I took the Airporter from Larkspur to SFO many a time). If we're going to the outskirts, Monterey County is 4 times the population of Mendocino County.
Guess which airport will have 8 non-stops to the Los Angeles region and which one will have 0.
I'm not trying to say places like Santa Rosa shouldn't have these options to serve people, that's awesome, I just don't see the logic in gutting SFO/OAK/SJC at the same time and the 5 times amount of people they serve and comparable flight options.
They supposedly believe it'll be easier for them to reenter the market at SFO/SJC given it's served by several competitors:
"With all of this growth, there had to be losers. Kirsten wanted to stress to me that the cuts that are coming in both Los Angeles and San Francisco are all about opportunity. It’s not that they wanted to leave these markets, but they really wanted to bulk up PDX and SAN. With only six B737s coming next year, they had to make hard decisions. So, they’ve thought about this strategically, trying to focus on markets that can be sacrificed.
What do I mean by that? Well, Kirsten noted that these are markets that have multiple competitors already. If Alaska leaves, it doesn’t create a vacuum. The airline can always go back in again in the future if it deems them worthy. It saw this as the lowest risk markets to leave in order to fund the growth elsewhere."
https://crankyflier.com/2025/10/27/2...san-francisco/