Horizon Service Cuts?
 

I just had several flights out of ALW require rebooking as of mid September, going to November at least. Looks like the other shoe may be dropping with the upcoming transition away from the Q400 - appears we’ve lost our early flight that gets to SEA in time to connect to the east coast.

Did this happen to anyone else?

I think just standard schedule change. I have tons of skywest flights that have schedule change in Sept.

I think this may be bigger. We go down from 2 flights daily to 1 as far as the schedule goes out…

We’re used to a seasonal transition from 3 to 2 flights. 2 to 1, knocking out east coast connections, is a whole different ballgame.

There was some discussion about the Horizon service cuts due to the Q400 retirements in April in this thread (including that ALW and others would be dropping to one flight a day):
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alas...ations-19.html

Service dropping to 1X daily for ALW, EAT, YKM, GTF, YYJ, YEG..

I have noticed YYJ down to 1x a day after Labour Day. This makes a lot connections very inconvenient.

I am about to book New Years flights to Hawaii but I’ll now look at WS and AC. Will still probably travel on AS as I have a companion pass to use.

This is brought to you by the same management group that can’t make peace with their pilots. Now they have decided to get rid of the Qs before there are replacement aircraft. Soooo 25% fewer aircraft mean 25% less flights.

Could be even higher percentage of flights if the Q’s fly on average more flights than other aircraft types in the fleet (perhaps due to generally short routes).

I noticed it as well.

I also noticed that Pullman maintained their flights as did Missoula, Bend and Medford.

At this point, I think the writing is on the wall for Walla Walla and Yakima in a general effort or final step to "consolidate" air traffic into Pasco. How do you continue to staff and maintain a spot for one flight per day. And that one flight per day is realistically only good for connecting to someplace no further east than Denver. Heck, the two flights per day is already not very convenient. I went to Fresno in March, and it was faster for me to drive the hour and a half to Pasco as opposed to leave from Yakima at 5:30am and sit in SeaTac for five hours.

100% this. If the management team is publicly stating that a new month beginning can cause flight issues and express surprise about the number of pilots they have, it’s hard to avoid assuming that they have not thought fully through the individual flight and out station implications of their big fleet announcement. I actually really hope I’m wrong about that, but think the evidence is stacking up in favor of a leadership team in completely over their heads.

I don't think it is "100% this" for the cities we are talking about. As a resident of Yakima, that late night into Yakima/early departure to Seattle gets canceled a fare amount and has for years; even pre-covid. Several years ago during one January, I think it was canceled over 30% of the time or something. Meanwhile, down the road in Pasco it just rolled on.

Wayfarer, what is it like/the sentiment in Walla Walla?

I used to fly that route often and while it true it did get cancelled some in the winter, it was almost exclusively due to weather like freezing rain, snow, and fog. Pasco has warmer weather and is not surrounded by mountains so it has less weather cancellations.

But it looks like Skywest is taking over some flying. As far as I recall, RDM had had only Horizon flights, and I noticed Skywest flying about half the SEA schedule starting in November (18th, I think). And RDM-LAX seems to go to Skywest in June 16.

I think it's unlikely that they're going to keep places like EAT or YKM at one per day long-term (well... depends on the definition of long, I guess), or leave those cities entirely. But it's going to be hard to hang on to elites in those Horizon-only cities with such a minimal schedule. Once you start having to drive to SEA/PAI from EAT or SEA/PSC from YKM, they will have other options and understandably less trust in AS/QX. Just maintaining their status becomes an annoying and expensive proposition.

My brother was supposed to fly out on the early flight yesterday from YKM. It was canceled. They "graciously" rebooked him on the afternoon flight. Of course, at that point, he would have missed his engagement. Instead, he and his travel partner huffed it to Seattle, politely told AS where they could shove it and flew on Delta.

We then were talking about the value of one flight per day with a history of cancelations, especially in December and January. At that point, it is a net negative. What if you are going someplace and you need to be there at a given time? You would now need a contingency plan for each booking.