Everything you say that applies to OAK applies to SJC. And unlike OAK, AS actually has a working focus city in SJC, with long term success in the market on non-Hawaii routes, instead of it being a spoke with some Hawaii flights (that don't even get daily service), and WN doesn't dominate market share there like it does OAK.

So why on earth would AS fly OAK-LAS before they started SJC-LAS?

Let's try and put this all in some perspective here.

WN flies a BUNCH of routes out of OAK and SJC that they don't out of SFO, such as SEA, ONT, RNO, SAT, HOU, EWR. In fact, you can basically characterize their SFO service as "we serve markets where we have big presence in like SAN, LAX, DAL, MDW, because there is reasonable market demand out of our market to SFO, but we don't go out of our way to throw ourselves in the buzzsaw of UA by serving SFO-EWR/HOU or other routes where UA has presence out of SFO, because we've decided to concentrate our Bay Area efforts on OAK/SJC. In effect, we have two Bay Area hubs and a spoke that has a lot of good options for our customers. That's pretty good, we think."

WN is a MUCH larger airline than AS.

But somehow AS is staffed by idiots who don't understand what profitable routes they are missing because they won't serve a route that connects two WN hubs, and they won't launch themselves headlong at OAK, but instead are... concentrating on two Bay Area airports (SFO/SJC) and providing hub/focus city connectivity into a third (OAK), with some pieces missing that look fairly logical if they want to add them in the future (LAX-OAK, SAN-OAK).

Mmmmmkay.

Young techies and trust funders generally do not live in the East Bay, have little interest in flying out of OAK - only Bay area airport without a lounge.

Contra Costa county is 4th in median HH income in the state, followed by San Francisco, Ventura, Orange and then Alameda (San Diego county is 15th). Oakland is on most lists as one of the top 5 most expensive cities in the country. Not sure how you get on those lists if it's only poor people living there. And if you need an anecdote for number of techies, just sit outside MacArthur BART for an evening rush hour and count the number of tech buses that roll by to do drop offs (it's a lot). Not all techies want to live in SF (or on the peninsula) or can afford it.

And lastly there is a lounge at OAK and it has been there over a year http://www.escapelounges.com/escape-...akland-lounge/

The east bay is a large, rich population by most standards, but the west and south bay are a little richer and more importantly, have more large companies that pay for expensive business travel. In the urban cores of SF/Oakland, both SFO and OAK are pretty easily accessed on BART, so most airlines figure they can adequately serve the region exclusively at SFO.

OAK has horrible traffic and just recently got a train link to the airport. Living in south bay there is absolutely no reason I would want to fly out of OAK. SJC is easiest, SFO for international and I could take the train if I wanted (Caltrain to BART) as public transit. OAK has no easy access from south bay (bus to Fremont then bart?)
Plus I still remember it as a dump from college days (I think that has changed now)

The missing discussion point is traffic and point-to-point predictability. SFO is unreliable due to flow control while still in the air. Once on the ground, the Bay Bridge is a crapshoot most of the time. SJC is relatively distant traffic-wise from anything north of Hayward. OAK is by far the best choice for origins/destinations between Fremont and Berkeley and to everything withing a 15 mile radius of the east side of the Caldecott.

Write off that swath if you will, but the only reason I can see for AS not beefing up OAK is that they don't currently have the stomach for taking on Southwest while they overstretch their network to new destinations. If AS starves OAK, plenty of people will switch to Southwest rather than schlep over the SFO on AS/Virgin. I say that as a long-time 75K who flies weekly between SEA and OAK and is getting fed up with AS's foibles.

If AS's crappy execution continues, they're going to get their butts kicked by Delta and others and will be forced to retrench on the west coast. That's when I believe AS will focus on OAK but by then the damage will be done.

This is really the status quo, not a potential future situation. WN has 70-80% of the seats to PDX/SEA and AS doesn't challenge them anywhere else.

I think the last "challenge" was OAK/SNA. Great route, better fares than WN, and of course, you know what that meant. The route died.

Expanding in SAN and SJC as AS has done in the past decade is taking on the #1 carrier in those cities. This just happens to be... WN. They just don't want to do it in a city where WN owns 70% of the market and can bury them on frequency/pricing.

But I'd say starting BUR-SJC, SJC-SNA and SAN-SMF are definite shots at WN? Care to tell me what other airline operates those routes?

I would expect WN to launch Hawaii aggressively from OAK/SJC/SAN/SNA/LAX/SMF, maybe even BUR/LGB as the next salvo in the war. We'll see if AS retrenches (I'd expect OAK/SMF as the first cuts if they do).

The efficiencies of hubs rule much of the airport pair route selection in the U.S. market: more destinations, more frequencies, served by bigger aircraft with lower CASM. Southwest plays the game differently - but suffers a much lower destination count relative to size. (Alaska and JetBlue offer more destinations while being < 1/2 the size.) There's no logic that says a hub carrier (and that's what AS is in the Bay Area after its purchase of VX) has to serve all area airports with extensive routes. UA doesn't even fly from JFK!

OTOH, they are on record as saying "whoops, we shouldn't have cut JFK".

That being said, OAK is a lot closer to being MDW/HOU/DAL/ONT than it is JFK (heck, you could argue they're closer to ISP than JFK). Nobody is rioting because UA isn't serving OAK, DAL or MDW at all. But somehow AS is the worst airline ever, not because they don't serve OAK, but that they aren't doing non-spoke routes out of OAK other than Hawaii flights. OK, whatever, fine. Worst airline ever.

With the WN slot reductions it might be worth a re evaluation. Large market, less competition than LAX and artificial constraints on your competitor.

Given recent comments from AS though I would not expect we'll see much in the way of new routes this year so any expansion at OAK seems unlikely.

Which, fwiw, has nicer food and beverage than the hub lounge at SFO. Also it is now open to Amex Plats along with J pax, so no reason this should keep from OAK.

I would agree that SJC is a better O/D market than OAK, but not a good option for SF, East Bay or Marin.
So yes, if AS has limited resources maybe more profitable to add routes to SJC, assuming there are no capacity issues.

But, those who live in SF proper have SFO. If you're in Fremont, SJC and OAK are close to being equidistant. But, obviously most of the East Bay is closer to OAK than any other airport. Same with the entire North Bay when you consider there is no freeway that connects the Golden Gate Bridge to 101 or 280. I still don't know what CalTrans was thinking when they didn't make 101 a freeway through SF. It's really annoying to drive 19th Ave.

Also, AA, DL, and UA have all added flights to SJC in the past couple years.