dave1013

SEATTLE, Feb. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Alaska Airlines announced today it is expanding service from the Bay Area to Hawaii, with daily flights between both Oakland and San Jose, Calif., and Kahului, Hawaii, on the island of Maui, starting June 5, 2011. The airline currently operates four weekly flights between Oakland and Maui and three weekly flights between San Jose and Maui. With the increase to daily service, Alaska Airlines will offer 35 flights a week from the Bay Area and Sacramento, Calif., to Hawaii.

At the same time, the carrier is discontinuing service between San Jose, Calif., and Austin, Texas, effective May 6, 2011. Alaska will continue its nonstop daily service between Seattle and Austin.

"We wanted to align our San Jose and Bay Area service with our overall West Coast strategy," said Joe Sprague, Alaska Airlines' vice president of marketing. "We're very committed to the Bay Area and expanding our Maui service to daily flights is a great benefit for our customers."

eponymous_coward

WN chased them off the route, in all of 6 months time.

I wonder what happens when WN starts flying ETOPS from OAK and SJC, which isn't too far down the road, I think. You can pretty much bet WN will be very aggressive pricing things, they have great mind share out of SJC and OAK, and they will dump a bunch of capacity into the Bay Area-Hawaii routes (and unlike AS, they will be able to run one-stops to LAS profitably, which is a big selling point in Hawaii- Hawaiians LOVE their Vegas trips, so WN should be able to fill planes, even if all of a sudden there's too much capacity for just Bay Area-Hawaii- I believe one-stops to Vegas through the Bay Area were old AQ routes). At some point AS is going to have to make a stand against WN outside of SEA/PDX, and putting all the eggs into the Hawaii basket is risky when WN and G4 are about to come online and start trashing Hawaii yields in a lot of West Coast markets.

golfingboy

Another example of AS retreating so easily... They are going to run out of Hawaii options then where are they going next after the competition has taken up all unique routes like the nerd bird?

Eastbay1K

IM(nsh)O, this is quite shortsighted. I doubt the route was losing $, but what do I know. I understand the desire to immediately put planes on routes that make immediate(more) money, but as I had predicted, the route network keeps getting thinner and thinner. West coast routes are getting thin (frequencies) or disappearing (esp. QX) It is rapidly becoming an airline with SEA sending low-frequency spokes East, a lot of HI feed from around the West, and high frequency SEA/ANC. We'll see how the incremental increase of Mexico service holds.

SJC ORD LDR

I would think the SJC-AUS flights would have done well with a large number of nerds who do business in both cities. I guess it's SJC-SLC-AUS from now on if I want to go there.

The Hawaii flights are nice and I've flown them a couple times, but those are totally leisure flights and I don't see how they would be more profitable in the long term.

beckoa

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Sad to see this go... And I'm sure there will be some ripe folks in both SJC and AUS. When I flew this route in Jan however the sunday flight only had 5 seats occupied in the front, and I think the back was rather light as well. WN will sure be happy

czpdx

According to the schedule, it looks like they're leaving the PDX-SJC segment as mainline. Wonder if that will last?

mreed911

On Delta.

Or AUS-DFW/LAX-SJC on AA.

Or AUS-DEN/IAH-SJC on UA/CO.

Or AUS-SJC on WN.

golfingboy

For now until they find a route that needs that jet...

formeraa

Hopefully, someone from AS will chime in. I doubt that the route was making any money. I don't think that AS would have pulled it, if it had been making money.

Eastbay1K

That is not necessarily true. When your fleet is thin, you often have to choose between dumping a somewhat profitable route for a route that you can make more profit on. Also, you have to give a market time to build itself.

robsaw

Looks like AS is positioning themselves as the replacement for the defunct Aloha Airlines.

With BLI-HNL, how about adding BLI-OGG; that will attract even more Vancouver traffic.

tusphotog

I always thought the AUS-SJC route was a bit strange for AS. There really isn't much feed on either end of it (unless you take it to PDX). WN can route a bunch of connecting traffic through that route. It'll be interesting to see if WN stays with that route. I suspect they will...for a while at least.

Chugach

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I agree and I think AS wisely figured it wasn't worth it to fight WN on a non-hub route.

SJC ORD LDR

When AS started it they figured they could make a go of it after AA dumped it in their major retreat from SJC. I always thought of this as a point to point route that fits the businesses of Silicon Valley and Austin. But then WN got into it and I'm not surprised that both carriers would last on this route. There is some demand, but not enough for multiple carriers. I was hoping WN pulled out.