getoffthe grid

Went to book flight later this month SFO-PHL and the former 10 a.m. N/S appears to have disappeared from schedule, leaving only the redeye (10:37 p.m. departure). This is certainly a negative move for SFO-based business travelers trying to maintain their Mileage Plan relationship through the loss of AA and DL as domestic partners. Is this seasonal with any known plans to restore? Just showing dots on a destination maps from SFO, serviced only by redeyes (RDU, now PHL) is not compatible with #MostWestCoast .

Any insights?

jrl767

the morning SFO-IAD trip is also gone; late afternoon with late night arrival is still extant

eponymous_coward

My insight is that Alaska probably knows better if a flight is profitable than us in the peanut gallery.

SFOPeter

Probably has to do with utilization. They have made a lot of changes that are not really compatible for the SFO business traveler. Quite often there seems to be no coverage, more expensive F, or bad flight times. But it only takes 75K to get to the top tier so I guess you can count that 25K of flying other airlines towards your AS status.

getoffthe grid

Agreed, but there appears to be, if you'll pardon the expression, no "long haul" patient plan for these routes to evolve. This was a VX route that was suspended pre-merger and then resumed and now reduced. Alaska markets to Bay Area East-West business travelers but then does not fully service them (as business travelers) unless you are going to New York or Boston.

milypan

Just be glad it's still there?

tphuang

The performance on SFO-PHL/RDU have been really bad. A move to redeye flying increases fleet utilization and lowers the bar needed for a route to be breaking even.

ashill

AS's route network to PHL has always been minimal. The SFO-PHL route is of course new (VX flew it briefly but didn't as of the merger). AS has long had just one daily flight to PHL, usually a 7:30ish departure from SEA and a 18:00ish departure from PHL (pretty nice timing for O/D traffic to SEA, but very few beyond-SEA connections are possible). But sometimes it was scheduled as a truly awful redeye (leaving SEA at 20:30 and getting into PHL very early, so bad even by redeye standards) with an 06:00ish departure from PHL. They also started seasonal redeyes out of PDX with similarly-awful timing. So if they had trouble getting the revenue to support sensible traffic out of their main hub in SEA, I'm not surprised that they've having similar trouble out of SFO. So I'd be glad that it's at least an after-bedtime redeye instead of the 20:30 redeye when I'm not yet tired enough to get even four-five hours of sleep.

Note: "long" is defined as "for most of the three years I lived in PHL and flew to SEA several times a year and thus paid close attention to this route".

jacobguo

What do you guys think of LAX-PHL?

Eastbay1K

Insightful as you may be (and you are insightful to a fault ), my not as insightful insight is that even if a particular flight isn't necessarily as profitable as different aircraft utilization may be, the risk of these route reductions / frequency thinning / time changes is that Alaska will drive some passengers to choose another airline not only for that route, but for many others. Accordingly, instead of being the airline that serves "most of your needs most of the time," it is going to be that airline that you think fondly of as an airline you used to fly in the past.

ashill

At the risk of getting into a discussion that has been beaten far beyond dead in other threads, AS obviously isn't that airline in PHL and it isn't that airline in SFO either (and, like VX before it, never was). ASVX have gone from no SFO-PHL service to SFO-PHL service at pretty good times that didn't command fares that could keep it working to SFO-PHL service as a redeye. A redeye is still more likely to work for SFO-based people than no service.

If AS is trying to be most or all things (within North America) to anybody outside of SEA, maybe PDX, and Alaska, they've got problems because they simply aren't big enough to be that. They don't have enough planes or gates to serve all the major routes (in narrowbody range) with business-friendly schedules and frequency from SEA, PDX, SFO, and LAX (or even just SEA and SFO). So they have to pick and choose and find a way to win customers for the routes they fly. Remember that it's only a pretty small sliver of the market who won't choose AS for SFO-LAX or SFO-SEA or SFO-[insert city to which AS does have service that meets the customer's needs for a particular trip] just because AS didn't have suitable times when they wanted to fly SFO-PHL.

3Cforme

There are five AA SFO-PHL flights tomorrow, and three UA.

Flying for Fun

Top tier Status MVPG75K requires 75K miles if only on AS metal, 90K with partners. It is whatever threshold you pass first. If you fly 40K on AS you still need 50K on partners when you only need 35K on AS. It is designed to promote flying more AS.

James

getoffthe grid

I want to fly AS more but they keep taking away routes/flights.

MAH4546