1K-SFO

It appears as of March UA is dropping its SFO-PAE flights. Hoping this helps shore up AS service. That airport is great!

ucdtim17

Good for AS, not good for customers on that route

olouie

Will make it a bit less crowded. PAE really isn’t ready for prime time yet.

nycua1k

that is interesting. Those flights especially the one at night appear to be mostly full. Though it experiences frequent delays.

WebTraveler

I can't tell - are they replacing the city pair with a flight to some other route?

Toshbaf

When I looked, UA SFO-PAE flights were significantly more expensive than SFO-SEA.

UA should consider one flight to ORD. As for the other 3, I don't know. One more to DEN? I wonder if IAD, IAH, or EWR can support a flight?

Horizon Air at PAE appears to be just O&D traffic. If so, anyone can pick that up except they may be a disadvantage with a smaller frequent flyer program base.

jrl767

remember that PAE doesn’t have mainline service, and to the best of my knowledge nobody plans to start bringing 737 / 319 / 320 flights in

both AS and DL have run the E75 on SEA<—>MKE (1694 miles), AS also to DAL (1670 mi); at 1720 mi, PAE<—>ORD might be a tad beyond its usable range

Toshbaf

If Skywest/United Express doesn't replace the 3 United PAE/SFO flights, what will become of the 3 slots? (Ok, I think technically PAE is not slot controlled by it is limited to 24 flights per day).

Alaska could easily find 3 more frequencies or additional cities. I don't know if they have the planes but there could be some juggling of the schedule.

Who else would want to fly to PAE?

American or Southwest could dream up of 3 flights, I'm sure. Southwest, having given up before it started probably won't. Spirit or Frontier could also dream up of solutions.

How about Delta, who is trying to gain market share in Seattle and could gain some frequent flyers that sometimes use PAE?

Dreaming on, using the same times as United Express.

6:00 am departure - Delta to JFK 6:00 am - 2:40 pm 737-800
12:13 pm departure - Delta to SLC
7:14 pm departure - this is may be too late except for a West Coast destination. However, how about ORD 7:14 pm - 1:20 am OUCH! Could there be Boeing corporate passengers on such a flight?

or

6:00 am to SLC (good for connections)
12:13 pm to SLC
7:14 pm to JFK 7:14 pm - 4:00 am OUCH (maybe they can retime it to 11:59 pm - 8:45 am)

eponymous_coward

NK or G4 could swing in. Imagine some sub-daily frequencies to LA/Phoenix/Vegas.

A318neo

https://finance.yahoo.com/m/0d33ce66...is-flying.html

Article is about the fight for Dallas Love Field gates. The article says that E175's are used but 737-900ER will be used seasonally this summer. This probably shows that PAE could eventually convert to mainline.

I've always wondered if the lower labor costs of the E175 pilots is enough to mean that an airline will use that plane as much as possible per their union negotiations or if an airline can make more money with a full 737-900ER.

nearlysober

Concerns with PAE's ability to handle IRROPS came through for me again. First time was the January snow-storm which they clearly were nor prepared for. Granted they got a lot more snow than SEA, but they just basically threw their hands up and shut down.

Last night I was going to take a short after-work mileage run from PAE to PDX due to the half price sale for flights on 3/3. Not a ton of miles, but for a cheap fare I figured I'd probably get upgraded, get a few drinks, a meal in PDX lounge, and be home the same night.

An E75 from LAX to PAE (AS 2685) was diverted to SMF yesterday afternoon and was significantly delayed. That plane was originally going to to turn at PAE and head to PHX. Apparently the PHX flight was more important than PDX - so they gave the PHX run my plane, saw the tail swap on flightstats. Then, they delayed the 55min flight to PDX by 2.5 hours so they could fly up a 3rd plane from SoCal. So basically, my flight to PDX was going to leave AFTER the flight back to SEA... so had to cancel the whole run.

Technically could've swapped my plane out at SEA too... but with the abundance of flights there's less likely a chance to get hit by the random wheel of delays.

jrl767

believe me, I understand your frustration, but that's not "PAE's ability to handle IROPS"; that's AS ops and dispatch making decisions about aircraft and crew choreography while still getting the most number of paying passengers where they need to go with the least impact

nearlysober

I understand why AS made the decision... but it would've been less likely to happen to MY flight at SEA. There are more planes coming into SEA, more options for dispatching alternate airfact, and more flights going outbound so less chance that you draw the short end of the stick.

If there's only 4 flights flying out of PAE that late... you have a 1 in 4 chance of it being your flight that gets screwed.

JPat

I was on the AS 2804 last night. The second plane that was to send us to PHX had the rear emergency ramp unexpectedly deploy when it arrived at the gate in PAE. Hadn’t seen that before! So our flight was cancelled for about 60 seconds and than the GAs notified the passengers that another plane would be used for our flight.
we finally departed @ 10:22PM. Ugly night...
got a whole $75 each for our delay.🙄

jjclancy

It's a good topic, comparing the operational capabilities of both airports.

How many times have you been delayed into PAE for flow control?

What's the deepest queue for takeoff you've been in at PAE?