AS Ending SNA-OAK?
 

According to airliners.net and a search on KVS, SNA-OAK will disappear/ be reduced on 27 APR 08.

http://www.airliners.net/discussions....main/3791055/

Wow...I think everyone's throwing in the towel at OAK.

UA has removed OAK-IAD and even OAK-ORD at least for the off season.

Over the years, we saw CO cut OAK-EWR, and AA cut OAK-ORD and OAK-LAX.

They should just rename the airport to Southwest In'tl Airport and put everyone else out of their misery.

I have heard this from a few reliable sources. :(:mad: I think we'll be seeing more and more of this by AS, UA, etc - even if a route isn't losing money, is full, etc., with limited aircraft, they can make more $ with the plane on another route.

To the AS insiders here, what would be the best email address to write to express displeasure of the route elimination?

Thanks

What's sad was this was an innovative route for AS. Not a hub-and-spoke route, and they served it before WN even entered SNA.

I guess no one from the Bay Area will be able to take their kids to DisneyLand without having to fly Southwest. Orange County has a lot of business travelers and Alaska is giving up that route? I used to fly that trip a lot but have since changed jobs. I would see the same people on the flights. I bet they're not going to be happy...

This is the only route where I have regularly seen empty F seats. I can't imagine it's very profitable.

Just checked both internal AS and Orbitz websites...looks like April 26th is the last day for SNA-OAK service. Sorry to see it go but am not surprised. Load factors were not great and the aircraft could be put to better use flying to/from Alaska when we start our summer schedule in May.

Yes this route is being fully discontinued. I am not going to say much as an AS employee, but I can tell you the employees are just as stunned and unhappy as the passengers are. They are giving us the discontinuation month of May. So that April date posted is probably correct.

I think you can write into general AS customer service to write your displeasure with this route being discontinued. Sadly, I don't think it will help. I think their mind is made up. We are trying to get them to give us at least 1 AM round trip flight OAKSNA and 1 PM round trip flight for our regular business travelers, but I highly doubt that will happen.

Not good. :td:

Most business travelers need far more departures than two a day. It's hard to compete with the frequency WN offers to SoCal. I know a UGS on United who takes WN for all of her Bay Area - SoCal trips simply because of the frequency.

Well, it appears after all that this route is being pulled to have AC for a SFO/SEA market flood, at low prices, whether or not the route is actually "profitable." Rumors did seem to start about the time VX announced service.

Well, I think 5x day frequency (what AS was offering on sna-oak) is about the least AS can offer on the route to compete with Southwest. 1 flight a day simply won't cut it for biz travelers. I have flown OAK-SNA on Alaska a few times. I would have to say the flights weren't totally full, but they certainly weren't empty either. I always wondered if AS had any serious business traffic on that route or if it was all leisure traffic. I would have thought the business travelers would all fly Southwest because they have better schedule frequency and they don't cancel flights as often as AS does. I certainly prefer AS to WN in terms of the quality of service, boarding process/assigned seating and better appearance of the aircraft on AS, but AS reliability still needs to be a little better.

We've tried to make it work for the past three years. WN kept adding flights and with every flight added it pummeled the profitability. With WNs dominance at OAK and lower costs, we just can't compete with it. There were other routes of more strategic value that needed capacity.

Yup, there really isn't much of anything left at OAK anymore except WN and B6.

But more generally, it has been a long time since the legacies were able to compete effectively with Southwest for intra-California flying (except maybe UA with a few of its routes to/from SFO). I think the draw-down in California will continue, and eventually you'll be lucky if your local California airport has one daily flight to/from each of its airlines' major hub a day!

Yup that is what the company is saying right and left. I want to reply to this so badly and state my thoughts and views on this...I know this is not the place.