Alaska Airlines will use A320-family aircraft for new SFO routes- but fate of Virgin brand still in question. (Image: Chris McGinnis)
Now that Alaska Airlines owns Virgin America, it has targeted the Bay Area for “the single largest new market announcement” in its history, the company said Thursday. Will this mean lower fares? Probably not…
Alaska/Virgin plans to add service on 13 new routes from San Francisco and San Jose in late summer and fall of this year.
All the mainline flights on Alaska’s new routes will use aircraft from the “A320 family,” which is the type used by Virgin America. Alaska has an all-Boeing mainline fleet. New San Jose flights and a few from SFO will use smaller Embraer E175s.
It’s interesting that Alaska didn’t say the routes would be operated by Virgin America – just that they will be flown by A320 family aircraft- something that could be telling regarding the fate of the Virgin brand. Alaska executives have been feverishly studying what to do about the Virgin America brand, and they are expected to decide and announce something by the end of this month ahead of its annual investors meeting.
New mainline daily service coming from Alaska (and the starting dates) include flights from San Francisco to Philadelphia (August 31), New Orleans (September 21), Nashville (September 5), Indianapolis (September 26), Raleigh-Durham (October 19), Baltimore-Washington (October 16), and Kona, Hawaii (December 14).
The airline will deploy E175s for new daily flights from SFO to Albuquerque and Kansas City, both starting September 18.
Where are all those new flights going to fit at SFO’s limited number of gates? “The A320 flights will be operated by Virgin in Terminal 2, and we’re adding a fifteenth gate to support this. (Gate 50 will expand to be an A/B gate.) Flights operated in Embraer E175s will be operated by Alaska Air in their current location in the International Terminal,” said SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel, adding, “We are in discussions about once they begin operating under a single certificate, but these gate plans have yet to be finalized.”
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Alaska’s Horizon Air subsidiary has ordered new three-class E175s. (Image: Alaska Airlines)
At Mineta San Jose, Alaska will begin new daily E175 flights to Austin and Tucson on August 28, and four flights a day to Los Angeles International beginning September 20. (Click on the link above to see flight times for all the new routes.)
The new markets are in addition to Alaska’s previously announced new service from the Bay Area coming in the months ahead, including San Jose-Newark (starting March 12), San Jose-Burbank (starting March 16 three times a day), and San Francisco service to Orlando, Orange County, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Mexico City.
Fares: We do not expect Alaska’s push into the Bay Area will result in lower fares– it’s not in this game to be a discounter. Instead, it will likely focus on service and amenities to attract a larger share of the lucrative business travel market. Even though it has the last remaining mileage based frequent flyer program, Alaska will likely have a big challenge convincing high mileage United Mileage Plus members to make the switch. One of the first steps in doing that is providing flights to cities where business travelers need to go. It will be interesting to see what else they do to woo frequent travelers.
For the Bay Area, “Our strategy is to use the same philosophy that’s worked well for us in our Pacific Northwest hubs, which is to offer convenient, nonstop flights to the places guests fly to most,” said Alaska executive vp Andrew Harrison.
Sadly missing from the new line up: SFO-Atlanta, a key business route locked up by Delta and United which could use a competitive bump from the new Alaska Airlines. Another miss for business travelers: SFO-Phoenix, largely dominated by American and Southwest.
To hype the announcement, Alaska has kicked off a social media promotion that will offer “destination-inspired food items” and free flights to Bay Area residents. “Travelers who tweet the airlines at @AlaskaAir and @VirginAmerica using the hashtag #MostWestCoast and with an airplane emoji will score the chance to have a destination-specific treat (think BBQ for Nashville and beignets for New Orleans) delivered within a few hours to their front door,” Alaska said, and some will win a free flight to one of the new destinations.
Are you more inclined to fly Alaska Airlines these days? Why or why not? Please leave your comments below.
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I know how many flights and planes Southwest has. I still think they borderline qualify as a “major world airline”, simply because they have a quite small geographic footprint. Emirates flies to 6 continents and is known around the world. Southwest operates 8 times as many flights as Emirates every single day. But I wouldn’t say their importance on the world scale is even close to that of Emirates. Just my 2 cents
With 713 planes Southwest has almost as many planes as United, Delta and American and flies to more domestic destinations than United, Delta or American. To many Southwest has been viewed as a minor airline but Southwest flies just as many people and goes to more places in the US than the so called big three. I cited the other airlines because they are growing and will be acquiring new aircraft and are making decisions to go with mixed aircraft or to stay with one type of aircraft rather than a mix of Boeing, Airbus, Embraer or Bombardier.
I said “major airlines in the world”. Southwest borderline qualifies. The other examples you gave are ridiculous, they don’t even come close.
Not all…Southwest is strictly 737s and Jet Blue, Spirit and Frontier exclusively fly Airbus, Allegiant will soon be all Airbus
Nice to see New Orleans getting a little bump from both VX and UA.
When I lived in SF for nearly 40 years, your daily non-stop service to MSP was rather restricted, especially after the “deregulation” disaster (IMO).
The E175 is absolutely the most perfect small (less than 100 total souls on board) jet in the industry. Thanks Boeing and Airbus for allowing this.
I adore the virgin brand. I am loyal to them first if I can travel their routes. I like Alaska Airlines very much. If I have a choice it would be to keep intact the Virgin Brand and philopshy over that of Alaska.
B6 flies it, though it’s on a redeye and I am not sure if it’s even flown daily.
I traveled Alaska Air for 30 years while I lived in Seattle and missed them terribly when I moved to the Bay Area. Now…if they can just open more flights out of OAK…
Love this news! Competition on nonstop routes I’ll actually fly? Yes, please 🙂
Boarding Areas A – C are the South Terminal, but IIRC, A was torn down to make way for the new international terminal. What is now boarding area D or the central terminal was the international terminal until the current international terminal opened in 2000 or so and Boarding Areas E and F are the north terminal.
This is all great news. Now if only we could see SJC-PSP, please!
Ya, I get that single aircraft type is great for maintenance. Virgin America uses the same strategy. But Virgin’s planes are in great shape. Virgin also has a large outstanding Airbus order, that will include delivery of quite a few new Airbus planes this year. That’s exactly what allows these new routes to start.
Planes are a lot like cars. They lose enormous value the moment they drive (fly) off the lot. For AS to dispose of these brand new beautiful planes would cost a fortune: 10s of millions, if not 100s of millions of dollars. I’m not in the AS executives offices, so I have no idea what they plan to do. But Boeing employees would have to buy an unbelievable number of flight tickets to compensate AS for that loss of money. I just don’t see it.
….actually…one of the three legs of Alaska’s management strategy is to use only 737’s to keep maintenance costs down. (Southwest, of course, does the same thing.) Moreover, with the current Administration, imported planes are likely to get far more expensive and Boeing craft much cheaper (especially as they are subsidized by more defense spending).
But there’s a *bigger* reason I don’t think Alaska will add Airbus to its fleet permanently: politics.
Alaska is very keen to emphasize that just as Boeing is Seattle’s original hometown company, Alaska is now its hometown airline. (Originally, it was United, but that’s a story for another day.)
Love to see some San Jose-Boston flights!
On the other hand, not nearly every major airline in the world is headquartered by Boeing’s door, which is likely to be one of Alaska’s biggest corporate clients.
Note that Alaska started Seattle – Charleston, SC nonstop service specifically to service Boeing’s facility there.
UA is starting SFO-GEG 2X daily on June 8
In the email announcement, the New Orleans, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Philadelphia and Kona routes were described as Virgin America routes, while the flights to Albuquerque, Kansas City, and Mexico City were described as Alaska routes, as were all the route from SJC. So maybe they do intend to operate anything with an A320 under the Virgin America brand?
Another route that is currently not flown by any airline: San Francisco-Spokane, WA.
Umm, what??? SFO does NOT have a “South Terminal”. SFO also does NOT have a “former International Terminal” It DOES have terminals 1, 2, 3, and International
I always thought the plan was for AA to move to the renovated South Terminal and VX (now AS) to be in the former International Terminal. I guess that could change, but that was supposed to be the plan.
Within a year, VX and AS will be the same thing. And most of these flights don’t start for 6 months yet. So, you’re talking about a very short period of time
Hey Scott: That probably won’t happen until there’s a single operating certificate for both carriers next year. Will be interesting to see what happens in a few weeks when they announce the fate of the Virgin America brand.
This would be a lot more exciting if all these new SFO flights were eligible for Aadvantage credit. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like these will be operated by VX, so I believe that means no AA miles. The announcement of these new flights on the VX website says these will be “Virgin America flights,” and specifically lists the SJC flights as “Alaska Airlines flights.”
I’m with you on the E175, Brian! Love those big square windows 🙂
I agree, E175 is much nicer ride than 737 or A320
Good point, I forgot that AA is also splitting terminals. However your point about the quality of the existing terminal 1 is moot. It is in the process of being torn down and rebuilt from scratch. (except for DL’s small boarding area)
And AA needs to combine its operations that are currently split between Terminals 1 (former USAir) and 2. So there must be some interesting negotiations about SFO facilities underway between AA and AS. Terminal 2 is gorgeous and the existing Terminal 1 is fairly awful.
New non-stop service from San Jose to Tucson is cetainly a welcome addition by Alaska Airlines! I just booked a seat on the inaugural flight. And the spacious E175 aircraft is one of my favorite jets with 12 seats in first-class and 64 in coach. I think the passenger experience on the E175 is right on par with that of much larger jets.
SFO-MSP starts in July on E175s. Previously announced so probably why not on the list.
What on earth are you talking about? Almost every major airline in the world has a mix of Boeing and Airbus planes (plus Embraer and Bormbardier). Alaska/Virgin is clearly positioning itself for growth. I see no reason why they won’t keep both fleets. And perhaps even buy more planes
I’ve been to ATL a lot over the years (probably about 100 times) but only walked out of the airport once in 1999 when I had a friend in town and a 5 hour layover. Otherwise, it’s in one gate and out another.
If prices were more reasonable I’d route through SFO more often. ATL-SFO typically runs +50% or higher of ATL-LAX. The connecting point appearance is due to Delta routing a vast amount of traffic through here…plenty of ATL originating/terminating traffic, it just *seems* like less.
SWA moved that flight over to Oakland from SFO, so it’s still here.. kinda. I go to Atlanta at least 5x per year 🙂
WN dropped it a while back. Maybe two airlines flying it are enough. Besides, who actually goes to Atlanta? It always seems to be a connecting point more than anything.
SJC is going to see a lot of E175s.
I think these are planes that VA had on order… So it is actual growth…
This announcement is the cape. Where is the sword?
How are they going to operate a bunch of new flights using equipment they do not have? By canceling existing Virgin service. Just as we thought, they bought Virgin to kill all its existing service and jack up prices on all those routes. This announcement is how they are going to use Virgin planes until they go off lease: the pilots and FAs will slowly be let go as the number of former Virgin planes goes down.
As an ATL resident, SFO-ATL *definitely* needs a competitive disruption.
Alaska/Virgin at SFO will either need to move into the new Terminal 1 (when it opens in a few years) or they will need to convince American to move out of Terminal 2 and let them have the whole thing to themselves. I doubt they will want to continue the current arrangement of splitting between terminal 2 and International terminal.
MCI (Kansas City) but not STL (Saint Louis)? hmm.