Rickrich

I see the reno-Lax Horizon flight is being eliminated in late April. This is the flight I take each week. I guess it's time to switch to another carrier. My choices are American Eagle or Southwest. Who do you suggest I now give all my business to? I wonder what other routes Horizon is eliminating.

makfan

American Eagle pluses:
Miles can be earned in your Alaska account if desired
Assigned seats
minuses:
AA doesn't recognize AS elite status for early boarding or preferred seating (yet)

Southwest pluses:
Full-size jets
minuses:
Cattle call

golfingboy

As expected... I knew this route was doomed when AE entered the market...

Horizon has been trying to sell fares on this route for $49 to stimulate demand to no avail...

Looks like LAX is going to see a lot more cuts with the new CPA thing... We can start saying goodbye to those LAX-Oregon flights...

AS is going to have issues with LAWA if they do not ramp up the # of flights, because UA/CO will be drooling over AS's gates in T6.

I hope AS ramps up with more flights in 2012, or else their LAX mini-hub is going bye-bye...

eponymous_coward

So AS gets to pay LAWA for T6, and the deal is that they are contractually obligated to fly money-losing flights like LAX-RNO forever? They aren't allowed to change their service patterns by dropping a route? I'm surprised LAWA didn't evict them from the airport when they dropped LAX-CUN.

Yes, I'm sure AS is going to eliminate all of their MX flying out of LAX by 2012, as well as their LAX-DCA flying, or non-hub routes like LAX-YVR.

Just like AS dropping LAX-YYZ years ago obviously meant they were giving up on LAX- oh, wait.

golfingboy

LAWA will not accept airlines under-utilizing gates, so even if AS pays for a part [not most, small part of it] of the construction, but does not utilize the gates as expected, then expect LAWA to force AS to turn those gates over to LAWA so airlines who needs them can use them.

The gates AS will get in T6 is expected to be able to handle over 70 flights per day...

AS does not have to fly money losing flights, but they will have to hand over the gate space that they are not utilizing... AS's choice...

Mexico is purely O/D traffic and AS has cut MX traffic BIG TIME at LAX since the Swine Flu and I highly doubt we will see AS bring back most of those frequencies... The level of the Mexico flying is going to remain as it is for a long time. If Mexicana returns, I wouldn't be surprised if AS cuts one MEX flight.

LAX is going to go down to just SEA/PDX/DCA/YVR/Mexico with a few intra-CA QX flights... I am not sure if SJC will survive and it is not looking good.

So by 2012, AS will go under 30 daily departures is my prediction... Would you call LAX a mini-hub with less than 30 flights a day? Not me.

eponymous_coward

So, you're saying that there's no way AS/QX will try anything else out of LAX, like how they tried LAX-STS (successfully), tried LAX-PRC (not so much successfully), are trying LAX-SJC (final verdict not in yet), and so on? They're just going to fold their tents?

QX's capacity has to go somewhere. They aren't buying Q400s to replace RJs to have them sit around idle.

golfingboy

They have cut GEG, BOI, PRC/FLG, RDM, SFO, and a few others... Now RNO, and I doubt MFR/EUG will last too... ACV and RDD is questionable too, but I think this is a niche market that will survive, but only if AS wants them in the CPA arrangement, so we will see.

I am frustrated myself with the limited # of flights on AS out of LAX... I know it is what it is and it is not going to get any better.

AS has a lot of capacity constraints, mainline speaking, so they are going to deploy the birds on the most profitable routes even though there is a route out there that is profitable, but not as profitable... Maybe in the long run LAX will regrow into a more significant hub with 60-70+ departures, but in the next few years all we will see is routes being cut...

eponymous_coward

My point is that if AS is purchasing QX capacity, but saying "let's take it off LAX-RNO", it gets to flow somewhere else. It wouldn't shock me to see them try something else at LAX, since they historically seem quite open to trying things there to see if they work (and sometimes it does, like LAX-STS- I wonder if they'd see if they could get QX LAX-PPE service started to complement LAX-LTO). QX has also been flying LAX-. And having a strong operation at LAX is important for their partners (AA, DL), as well as future growth (at some point, AS is going to run out of places to fly 738s to Hawaii, and WN and G4 will eventually be moving into those markets as well- and CO is starting to try some things like LAX-ITO. So they can't count on it being a cash cow forever).

AS Flyer

I don't think the LAX-Mexico flying is going anywhere. In fact, they've added service this year to Mexico. Currently LAX is at:

LAX-MZT 1x daily
LAX-PVR 1x daily
LAX-SJD 2x daily
LAX-MEX 2x daily
LAX-GDL 2x daily (second flight added in 3/11)
LAX-ZIH 1x daily
LAX-ZLO 5x weekly

that's 10 flights. Not anything to sneeze at. It's not what it used to be but neither is the tourism market to Mexico. Many of the flights to/from LAX were feeder flights to the Mexico flights. With tourism down, and the scheduled being reduced, it's hard to support the connecting flights to Mexico

Additionally, you forgot the 2x daily flights to ANC in the summer. LAX isn't as big as it used to be but it's still a significant part of the AS route system.

formeraa

I believe that AS worked through the numbers BEFORE they agreed to move to T6 and pay money for remodeling/renovation. Like any other business, AS does the ROI analysis. Perhaps you're suggesting that LAX-RNO is the tipping point at which AS starts losing money at LAX?

Based on what you're saying about gate usage, AS is well below the LAWA minimums (which has very little to do with dropping LAX-RNO unless they were running 40 flights a day). For some reason, LAWA was okay with AS's usage.

golfingboy

When they started this project, AS touted that being in T6 will allow them to have over 70 daily departures and I am assuming LAWA is going to give them the gate space for 70 daily departures based on the assumption that AS will slowly expand at LAX...

Looks like that is not going to be the case, and if LAWA takes some gates away, it will be incredibly difficult for AS to get those gate spaces back...

I never said LAX-RNO was the tipping point or anything like that... If this trend continues, which I am expecting it will, the anticipated gate usage is going to be below what they originally planned when this project was developed. If they have too many gates, LAWA will take them away...

That is what happened with DL and they expanded in LAX overnight with all those expressjet flying. Before the NW merger, their LAX hub was too small to have the entire terminal 5 to themselves so LAWA threatened to do some shuffling if DL does not ramp up their flight activity in LAX... Obviously the expressjet thing failed, and DL was on the brink of loosing a lot of gate space, until they merged with NWA, which was a huge help with DL's LAX operations. Then DL added some international flights like GRU, SYD, and now HND.

LAWA will not boot AS out of T6, but if AS cannot sustain a certain level of usage, some of the T6 gates LAWA promised to AS will be given to other carriers... We all know the biggest issue in LAX right now is gate space...

meballard

Even 6 gates is actually a reduction from what they have at LAX now. I did a quick count when I flew out of LAX today, and they have at least 7 gates currently (I did the counts while in a plane, 5 parked planes, the gate I left from, and at least one more Alaska gate without a plane).

sxf24

I'm pretty sure LAX-RNO was a CPA route. There goes that theory.

johnp012001

Can anyone explain to me why there would be any changes to routes due to what amounts to an accounting change? Whether flying at-risk or under a capacity purchase agreement, I'm pretty sure QX didn't make route decisions in a vacuum. They still need AS to market, sell the tickets, provide connections. Not to mention, the ultimate goal is to make money for AAG.

So, under the CPA QX may make less, but that would mean AS makes more, so it should be a net zero for AAG, unless I'm missing something.

All that being said, why did they previously have a mix of at-risk and CPA flying?

ACVFlyer

Actually QX just shifted the schedule giving more capacity to ACV. The mid-morning northbound and early afternoon southbound flights no longer stop in RDD. RDD is down to one flight a day (early-am southbound and late-pm northbound both continue from/to ACV). Redding is less than 3 freeway hours north of SMF where travelers have access to WN and many other carriers = competitive airfares. From Humboldt (ACV), the closest airports are SMF and the Bay Area airports which require a mountainous 6+ hour drive. MFR is 4 mountainous hours from here. There are a lot of folks from SoCal that live on the North Coast and STS and they travel down there regularly. QX has been effective in tapping into this market and they have kept airfares reasonable. I wish QX would restore the daily northbound flight to either SEA or PDX. For now I have to fly on UA to get to the Northwest because QX via LAX takes too long and costs too much. I can drive to Seattle in 10-11 hours if I don't dawdle and traffic in Portland is not too bad.