Alaska Airlines is a significant player in the travel industry, ranking as the fifth-largest airline in North America, with over 41 million passengers in 2022. However, beginning in 2024, the airline will significantly change its schedule, reducing departures to more than a dozen destinations.
According to data from the flight schedule website Cirium, Alaska Airlines will cancel over 3,000 flights in January, according to Simple Flying. The most significant impact will be on service between Seattle’s Pane Field and its hub at San Francisco International Airport, where 72 flights per week will be cut, and over 5,400 seats will be reduced.
Other major cities will see 48 fewer weekly departures from the airline’s other hubs. These include flights between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, San Francisco, and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City and Spokane, Washington. Flights will also be reduced between Seattle Tacoma Airport and Sacramento and Oakland, California; Eugene and Portland, Oregon; Atlanta, Georgia; and New York’s J.F.K. Airport. According to Simple Flying, the changes will result in the loss of approximately 140,000 seats.
The airline will also reduce slightly smaller flights between other major cities. Cirium data show that the airline is reducing 34 flights per week between Anchorage and King Salmon in its home state of Alaska.
According to Simple Flying, the airline will discontinue 37 weekly flights between Los Angeles and Washington Dulles Airport. These combined changes will result in a decrease of nearly 10,000 available seats.
This isn’t the first time Alaska Airlines has announced significant service changes in recent memory. According to Simple Flying, the airline cut more than 200 flights from its November schedule from eight routes in June.
The relocation impacted routes between Boise, Idaho, and Austin, Texas, as well as San Jose, California, and Palm Springs, California. Flights were also reduced between Los Angeles and Boseman, Montana, and Reno, Nevada. Additionally, service between Portland, Oregon; Missoula and Billings, Montana; San Diego, California; and Salt Lake City, Utah, was reduced.
226 flights for the month reduced the airline’s schedule as a result of the change. However, according to Simple Flying, it represents a 4,723 increase over the same month in 2022.
Of course, Alaska Airlines isn’t the only airline that has recently changed its schedule. United Airlines carried out its previously announced plan to reduce the number of daily flights from its hub at Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey in July. The decision was made after the company experienced a logistical meltdown that resulted in days of delays and cancellations.
“Airlines, including United, simply do not intend to have their largest hub have its capacity severely limited on four straight days and still operate successfully,” United Airlines C.E.O. Scott Evans explained in an email to staff sent on July 1, obtained by travel news website One Mile at a Time. “We are going to have to further change/reduce our timetable in order to give ourselves even more spare gates and buffer—especially during storm season.”
Since then, United has reduced the number of flights from Newark this month from 410 to 390, according to Simple Flying. In addition, the company announced that it would eliminate over 700 flights from its schedule beginning in November, as well as a few planned international routes.