3ur0tr45h

I'd expect PAE on both of those

flytoeat

How does AAG/Horizon compete with United Express, Delta Connection, and American Eagle in those secondary markets to feed LAX and SFO? It's very expensive to set up new service in those secondary cities, and unlike SEA and PDX, Horizon won't have monopoly service in those CA markets.

Chugach

Would likely need to be a MAX route. Technically AS could get there with a 73G or a weight-restricted 73H, but the jet stream would have other ideas. I actually think JL would be a more likely candidate for a variety of reasons.

There is a market for Japan-Alaska, but I don’t think it would be hugely high yielding. Mostly tourists and seasonal workers, neither of whom are known for paying premium prices. ANC would likely need to put some incentives on the table to lure AS (or JL) for non-charters. Particularly since most of the tourist traffic goes to FAI, and I doubt JL would want to cannibalize its own service there.

bizeesheri

Would love for them to pick up the PSC-LAX flight that PSC is hoping to get. Right now Allegiant flies it seasonally and only 2x/week. Otherwise forced go through SEA, (on AS or DL), SLC (DL) or SFO (UA).

BW Flyer

I'd love to see AS getting into the Asian market, but I don't think it's management has the vision to take that risk. That left Seattle un-protected when the TPAC market started picking up 10 years ago. That's why DL used its established Asian market to put a stronghold in AS' backyard--SEA.

i agree that jet stream could be an issue even for the 737 MAX to fly to NRT, especially in the winter months. But AS entered the low yield mostly tourist market of HI about 10 years ago, and has been successful in expanding into that market (I assume). So a seasonal thinner route of ANC-NRT using larger single aisle planes like MAX-9 is not entirely crazy talk.

tphuang

TPAC has to be one of the lowest yielding markets out of North America. I routinely see $600 R/T fares on 10 to 15 hour flights. The ones who make money do it through very high level business class product, which AS simply is not capable of.

HI is not low yielding compared to TPAC. Right now, I see $500 to $700 R/T fares to HNL in December vs slightly over $489 to 700 on HU to PEK. One is a 6 hour plus flight and the other is 11 hour plus flight. You tell me which one is lower yielding. HI is a very high yielding market when compared to transcon flights.

flytoeat

Really? You think AAG should have "the vision to take that risk" of entering the Asia market? Strategic management is all about continuous assessment of marketplace opportunities and threats, coupled with an accurate assessment of your company's strengths and weaknesses. AAG's purchase of Virgin is a huge bet on a market opportunity (SFO and LAX) and a concurrent counter to a threat (Jet Blue buying Virgin instead). AAG is more than consumed with digesting Virgin, and they may have miscalculated their ability (strengths/weaknesses) to pull that one off. Certainly the whole Horizon mess is due to distraction from the Virgin purchase (AAG recently admitted as much in their quarterly earnings call). And given the current situation, you believe they should enter the Asia market as well?

channa

LOL selectively picking a fare in the market and assuming that's what dictates the yield? There are $300 RT Hawaii fares quite often. And where are the $3,000+ J fares to Asia in your calculation? And the lucrative Asia cargo not market? Hawaii caps F at what $1,200 or so from the West Coast?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but citing one fare is not necessarily indicative of what they're pulling in on a flight.

tphuang

Look up the calendar for the coming months of SEA to HNL vs SEA to PEK, the R/T fares are all about $500 to $600 to PEK and around $500 to HNL in January on non-holidays. My family and I fly to Asia multiple times a year from North America and the fares over there have cratered as Chinese carriers crashed the market.

As for $1200 F from west coast, those are not even lie flat seats. The $3000 J fares to TPAC are all on lie flat seat on wide bodies. What does AS have to compete against that? And how are 737 going to compete against 77W for cargo market? Unless AS decides to purchase wide body aircraft and install competitive J product, TPAC is simply not happening.

sullim4

Bingo. SEA-Hawaii is a huge money maker for AS.

Look no further than the Black Friday "deals" to HI. $548 RT to KOA and $538 RT to LIH are "Black Friday deals". Fares are regularly in the $700 range, particularly if you want to avoid red eye returns. The F cabins almost always sell out with full fare F pax. Lihue and Kona in particular are underserved from Seattle.

Meanwhile, just plugging in SEA-PEK into Google Flights, I see Hainan offering it for $486 RT if you leave tomorrow. Crazy.

davistev

I agree that SEA-ASIA would be a no go but ANC-NRT is only 3,430 miles distance with zero competition. ANC-HNL is 2780 miles is similiar distance and profitable.

beckoa

AS' longest flight is ANC-KOA and is served only seasonally a couple times a week.

Would be fun to have NRT or CTS, but think it'll take a while longer. Especially with the sting of HAV that AS is experiencing currently...

BW Flyer

i agree! if DL is able to fill up 240-300 seat wide bodies charging on average $600-900 Y fare (my experience is those $500 RT tickets have limited availability and mostly through consolidators), plus a large J section that international companies are willing to buy $3,000 a ticket for their managers to fly back and forth between SEA and PEK/NRT/HKG, I don't think the yield is any worse than AS flying 159 pax from SEA to KOA. The key is the higher number of pax a wide body can take.

i had a business trip to HKG earlier this month, and during this non-peak season, the outbound and return Delta flights were 95% (I think I saw about 4-5 empty seats) and 100% full (return) in the Y cabin, and 100% full in the J cabin both ways. Delta doesn't give out many if any free upgrades on those long haul international flights. So I imagine the majority of the J pax were paid pax.

And the TPAC market is one of the fastest growing aviation markets in N. America, with an rapidly expanding Asian tourists market and ever growing international trade with the Asian countries.

I know it is no way for AS to get in the TPAC market now. It is all about timing and corporate visions. My point is always that if AS seriously considered this market a decade ago, and believed in the growing TPAC market, at least they wouldn't have to fend off Delta's move to establish Seattle as their TPAC hub, and all the other routes that come with it. If Delta is able to establish their TPAC hub in SEA (I think they are getting there), they will be a major player in SEA for years to come.

I also understand AS was just a small regional airline 10-20 years ago, and probably would not have the courage and resources to get into that market then, even though there weren't many TPAC routes back then, so the barrier of entry was much smaller than now.

ashill

Yeah. That and the fact that I would bet a significant fraction of AS's Hawaii customers are using companion tickets, so even on a $700 airfare excluding taxes, AS is only getting $400/passenger round trip from companion fare travellers. I don't know how large the fraction is, and it drives credit card revenue which helps Alaska, but another reason to be cautious in comparing cheap coach fares to Hawaii to cheap coach fares to Asia as a proxy for yield.

Now it's pretty clear that AS does make good money from the Hawaii operation; otherwise, no way they'd have been able to expand as they have in the last several years while AAG has been as profitable as it has been. But that doesn't mean that an entire plane going to Hawaii produces comparable profit to an entire plane going to Asia once you factor in the extra seats and the much-higher fares up front even if the average discount coach fare to Hawaii really is comparable to the average discount coach fare to Asia (which I doubt).

​​​​​​
This is where I'm skeptical. Remember that NW/DL already had a reasonable long haul operation out of SEA; as of a random archived page on Wikipedia from 2009, they already had Amsterdam, Tokyo, Osaka, and Beijing service (and I think they had the joint venture with AF in place at the time, so they also had CDG service). I think that if AS tried to expand into trans-Pacific service then, DL may have responded defensively and held AS off. I think that AS is very smart to have a clear corporate vision of what they are and what they aren't; they'll get crushed like an ant if they try to be Delta. I don't know if SEA is really a big enough market to host two domestic hubs long-term, but the signs so far seem to indicate that it is, at least for now, profitable for both DL and AS.

tphuang

Not every player in the market is DL. Low cost Asians airlines have completely trashed the yields on TPAC routes. You have no real evidence that AS gets more companion fare travellers compared to other routes of comparable length like transcon flights, where the prices are much lower. HI is a very high yielding market. Otherwise, how would HA consistently have such high margins? This may change once WN enters the market, but I think AS will still get pretty good yield on those F seats.

You can doubt y fares to HA is comparable to y fares to PEK, but that's the reality. If you compare Hainan airline fares from SEA to PEK, it's very comparable to AS fares from SEA to HNL.

As for much higher fares up front, AS doesn't have a lie flat option for domestic transcon market, which is definitely needed for TPAC flights. Yes, the fares are 4 to 5 times more, but the seats also take up 4 times the space with elevated service and food.