Klrduks

This sounds weird to me. I live in Eugene and fly out of EUG 8-10 times a year at least. With the addition of Southwest and other carriers, A gates (with jet bridges) are hard to come by. The B-gates that Alaska/Horizon fly out of are tarmac boarding. I doubt they would ground board a 737 even if it fit into the B-gates so that mean A gates. I guess time will tell.

Eujeanie

That's my point. Everyone will be upstairs, and no one will be downstairs.

There's no "fitting into" the B Gates, they just sit outside. And it's very rare there is more than one AS plane there at a time. And back in the day (honestly I'm that old), plenty of airports ground boarded big planes - even Air Force One to this day! They do have these huge switchback ramp things, so they'll probably use those.

My bigger concern is who wants to wait for 200+ people to amble onto and off a plane for a 50 minute jaunt - most of us are headed to SEA to make somewhat tight connections. And talk about no service "because of turbulence" before, there will never, ever be any service (except in F of course).

mildfrequence

Have I missed where they have the 737s scheduled for anything other than LAX? (ex EUG, I mean)

Eujeanie

I've got a flight from EUG to SEA on May 6 and a return on May 13, both on 737s.

Calculon

I guess they could drop the flight completely and send it over to a city that's been reduced to 1x or 2x? Personally I'd trade a drink worth a couple of bucks and some extra boarding time in order to have more flexibility in flight schedule.

ACBLtd

This is something I've been moaning about since the Q200s were retired. My work took me occasionally to some of the smaller outstations such as ALW and more often to medium places like YEG, YYC, YLW, YYJ, and several places in Montana. When the Q400s replaced the Q200s, QX maintained a similar amount of lift from these cities by reducing frequency. I guess some of the outstations (looking at you, PUW) might be low yield college towns, but others are full of businessfolk traveling on expensive tickets. If the only choice is once a day, sometimes the solution is just to drive. That can't be good for business, and I would guess it can become a vicious circle. The worse the service gets, the poorer the remaining flights might perform.

Eujeanie

Actually, I'm (I think) remembering something....back when they had the shuttles between SEA and PDX (do they still run them?), weren't some of those flights on 737's? I seem to recall thinking the same thing - who wants to wait for that big bird to fill up then empty out.

Calculon

Seattle-Portland and Seattle-Spokane are both shuttle routes. 737s have been a thing there for a while. My personal experience is that they�re fine.

Eujeanie

I guess it makes sense to run them on busy routes where the little birds routinely were full with waitlists. I'm sure they didn't go out half empty.

PDXPremier

Not a big deal, but I prefer the E175s for SEA-PDX shuttle flights if I am in F since you are almost guaranteed beverage service on those flights whereas the mainline flights are almost always no service in F. I've never understood the discrepancy between the Horizon and Alaska mainline on this shuttle route.

rustykettel

Found it in one of the airport's planning docs. Two of the four B gates had jet bridges but were removed.

Jet bridge was added to A1 in 2021. Prior to that it was the only A gate with ground boarding. Maybe boarded from that one? Although AS did do jet bridge boarding for the Q at FAI.

Calculon

With lounge access at both ends I can't bring myself to care whether I get a drink on such a short flight.

PDXPremier

So who's going to be on the inaugural 737 flight to EUG??

mattime

ALW, EAT and YKM are all at 1x for what looks like all of 2023 which seems almost useless. My PUW is down to 3x and it looks like all the other Horizon stations are down a flight or two as well. We just got used to the 5x frequency as we had pre-pandemic, then poo. I see some rebound in the schedules this fall, except for those central WA stations, but this stinks. Any word on why they did that?

ashill

Yeah. SEA-YLW is down to 5x weekly in March and April. The more frequent schedule on the Q200s was so much nicer, although there's no way it would be viable when pilots are a limiting factor in the schedule they can fly. Ever since they dropped the Q200s, connections to the east coast from YLW/EAT (the airports I know best) have often been difficult or impossible. (What really drives me crazy is when, eg, YLW-SEA-BOS almost works but is four minutes under the minimum connection time.) So I am all in favour of E75 stations getting 737s and freeing up E75s for smaller former-Q400/Q200 stations!