Alaska Airlines is retreating from Washington Dulles, blaming slowing demand and economic uncertainty, but building up its network in San Diego with the addition of three more routes from a station where Alaska is competing with Southwest Airlines for the top market position.
Alaska Airlines Route Shuffle In Face Of Changing Demand
During its earnings calls last week, United Airlines said it is seeing a reduction in domestic economy class demand and would be slashing flights after the busy summer travel season. It appears Alaska Airlines will do the same thing on a number of long-standing routes, though Alaska will also expand service from San Diego to many routes that are already ultra-competitive.
Alaska Airlines Retreats In Washington Dulles, Blames “Economic Uncertainty”
Over the weekend, Alaska Airlines removed four routes from its schedule, including two transcontinental routes from Washington Dulles:
- Washington (IAD) – Los Angeles (LAX) – ends August 18, 2025
- Washington (IAD) – San Francisco (SFO) – ends August 18, 2025
- Chicago (ORD) – San Francisco (SFO) – ends August 18, 2025
- Los Angeles (LAX) – Nassau, Bahamas (NAS) – ends August 19, 2025
The Washington Dulles transcontinental routes date back to the Virgin America days, but have seen a slowdown in recent months as the new administration seeks to cull the federal workforce. Alaska suggests the cutbacks are connected to economic uncertainty:
“We’ve seen a recent decrease in demand on our routes between San Francisco-Washington Dulles and Los Angeles-Washington Dulles, potentially connected to economic uncertainty and a decrease in government-related travel.”
Alaska will continue to serve Washington Dulles from Seattle (SEA) and San Diego (SAN) and offers nonstop service to Washington National (DCA) from both Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Concerning the Chicago – San Francisco cut, Alaska admitted that it was unable to keep up with American Airlines and United Airlines (the latter of which offers up to 11 flights per day between the two cities) with only one flight.
“Other airlines offer a greater frequency of flights on this route compared to our once-daily flight.”
Finally, the Nassau route proved to be a loser (Alaska also cut nonstop service from Seattle to Nassau earlier this year). JetBlue also cut nonstop service from Los Angeles to Nassau, with Caribbean vacations from the West Coast far less attractive than from the East Coast.
Alaska Airlines Builds Up San Diego Focus City
But not all California cities will see cutbacks. While Los Angeles and San Francisco will lose flights, Alaska is growing from San Diego. The carrier announced new flights to:
- Chicago (ORD) – begins October 4, 2025
- Denver (DEN) – begins October 4, 2025
- Phoenix (PHX) – begins August 20, 2025
The Chicago and Denver routes will be operated by Boeing 737s, while the Phoenix route will be shared with Horizon and utilize both 737s and Embraer E175s. Each new route will offer three daily flights and the flights will operate year-round.
Alaska Airlines is also adding frequencies to other San Diego routes, including:
- Las Vegas (LAS)
- Sacramento (SMF)
- Salt Lake City (SLC)
- San Jose, California (SJC)
Every one of these routes has competition: the new Chicago route is also served by American, Frontier, and United, the new Denver route is served by Frontier, United, and Southwest, and the new Phoenix route is served by American, Frontier, and Southwest.
CONCLUSION
Alaska Airlines is shifting domestic capacity away from unprofitable transcontinental traffic and focusing more on building up its San Diego base. With the new routes, Alaska will serve 44 nonstop destinations from San Diego, more than even Southwest.
Alaska is just like the low-cost carriers in that it cannot compete in other legacy carrier hubs
And those who don’t think that united has Hubs with high market, share concentrations, this is exactly what happens when a carrier not only controls a high percentage of the market share but also is desperate to get rid of any competition.
Alaska’s product is not competitive in long haul markets As a result of their decisions after the virgin America merger. San Diego simply makes more sense for them to concentrate their efforts, but they stepped down a notch in terms of the competitiveness of their route system
And there are implications for their long haul international flying from Seattle based on what is happening with these transcon routes
“And those who don’t think that united has Hubs with high market, share concentrations, this is exactly what happens when a carrier not only controls a high percentage of the market share but also is desperate to get rid of any competition.”
The comparison is and has always been United’s lack of a hub like ATL, DTW, MSP, and SLC (monopoly airports that Delta calls the source of its profits): hubs with one airport in the entire region or market share well above 70% at a lone airport in a metro area. United simply does not have that, no matter how much you try to cloud that easy fact for whatever reason… Denver is getting closer to that type of airport for United, but it certainly is not now.
“Alaska is just like the low-cost carriers in that it cannot compete in other legacy carrier hubs”
And yet somehow Alaska is bigger in LAX than it’s ever been before.
And in 2025, Alaska is flying its biggest schedule ever in SEA.
Virgin’s old position at SFO wasn’t profitable for Virgin nor was it ever going to be for Alaska vs UA. But it also makes sense why AS would prioritize the very lucrative SAN market vs trying to compete with a small position in SFO.
However, moving resources away from SFO doesn’t translate to AS not being able to compete in other legacy carrier hubs. As LAX and SEA easily demonstrate.
” And there are implications for their long haul international flying from Seattle based on what is happening with these transcon routes”
See above. Alaska is twice the size in flights and seats vs Delta in SEA. The implications are that Alaska is doing just fine and adding longhaul flights out of SEA while in active discussions about joining OneWorld JVs.
Across all the major West Coast airports, Alaska alone is the largest carrier of AA/AS/DL/UA in flights and seats, to say nothing of the addition of AA capacity and loyalists in Southern California that have their loyalty rewarded on AS or AA, regardless of metal.
There are lots of implications for Alaska as they build up SEA for longhaul flights, but the implications are quite bright given their massive size at SEA alone and the West Coast
we’re not going there, Max.
DL does not have monopoly hubs according to their own verbiage.
you choose to manipulate what they say in order to argue a point which no one that understands the industry believes.
UA gets more revenue from its hubs than DL does. UA has market share at a number of its airports as DL does at ATL, DTW, MSP and SLC> and even in metros like the Bay Area or Baltimore/Washington where there are other airlines w/ large DOMESTIC operations, UA by far has higher international revenue and share than other carriers have in their strength hubs.
as for SEA, AS and DL have divided the SEA local market. AS carries the volume within the western US at comparable average fares to most places except Alaska where AS has an average fare advantage.
DL has the largest share and much higher average fares east of the Mississippi which is true compared to every other carrier.
DL also is the largest long haul international carrier from SEA.
AS’ larger size at SEA doesn’t mean anything for being stronger in international if they operate 3 to 5 more flights in the same domestic market. Only 1 flight BEST feeds each international flight and will deliver the best revenue.
and AS is launching its international flights into markets where they are and will be the clear underdog not just in market share but also product and that will be true even when/if they switch to the 787.
UA has made it a point to eliminate competitors and is concentrating its presence in its hubs – ORD and IAD – even further.
DL most certainly has used the same strategy but w/ much less noise to grow its presence in NYC, BOS, LAX and in the parts of SEA where they are strongest.
as much as you want to believe otherwise, the chances are that AS’ international growth from SEA will look like SFO in a few years
“we’re not going there, Max.
DL does not have monopoly hubs according to their own verbiage.”
You really should read what delta writes in their investor day decks. Are they dumb enough to use the word “monopoly”? No. They are not, but they describe a monopoly hub in quite a few ways. I’ll never understand why this offends you so much? Delta says that’s where their profits come from and, as established previously, we both agree that it’s quite impressive that UA beat DL on margin absent any of the Delta benefits of monopoly hubs, a better credit card deal, and a non-unionized workforce.
Please find a new topic to argue. No matter how much you hate that Delta says their profits come from monopolies, it really doesn’t change much about what Delta says.
And no. United has no equivalent to the monopoly hubs of ATL/DTW/MSP/SLC no matter how you try to change the topic to some random unrelated topic about total revenue.
“as for SEA, AS and DL have divided the SEA local market. AS carries the volume within the western US at comparable average fares to most places except Alaska where AS has an average fare advantage.”
They do not divide it. Alaska is twice the size of Delta. Delta is the larger international longhaul carrier at SEA, as you say. Of course they are, Alaska only announced their first longhaul routes a short time ago.
“DL has the largest share and much higher average fares east of the Mississippi which is true compared to every other carrier.”
We already know from the other day you don’t know this and just spout this type of info based on your own assumptions, absent data.
“AS’ larger size at SEA doesn’t mean anything for being stronger in international if they operate 3 to 5 more flights in the same domestic market. Only 1 flight BEST feeds each international flight and will deliver the best revenue.”
You have an impressive lack of knowledge about how hubs twice the size of their competitor do enable stronger international traffic. Delta at JFK. UA at ORD, etc
no, they don’t use the word “monopoly” – but you do because you can’t win the debate based on facts.
DL’s market share is not any higher than UA or AA’s is in a number of their hubs.
UA’s hubs deliver far more local revenue than DL’s hubs do.
Those are facts and you can’t accept them because, if you did, you would have to admit that DL has very much succeeded w/ its strategies just as UA and other carriers have.
yes, markets can be broken down into pieces and your own little Diio tool proves it. You can’t argue market share data about a single market like ORD-LGA and not be able to figure out the same thing for SEA.
and the larger hubs you mention still have JUST ONE domestic flight which best feeds each international flight.
quit arguing.
the more you argue, the more you prove that you weren’t remote working for the last several days.
“no, they don’t use the word “monopoly”
Thank you for repeating what I just wrote?
You do love to find some way around not answering the points made but the fact remains — UA has no monopoly hubs as Delta describes their own, in effect, monopoly hubs. They just do not. Why you even argue this point is infantile. They do not.
“yes, markets can be broken down into pieces and your own little Diio tool proves it. You can’t argue market share data about a single market like ORD-LGA and not be able to figure out the same thing for SEA.:
I’m well aware of what can be shown. I’m just noting that you’ve already proven you have no backup to the claim you make as you established the other day and got called out on.
I can figure out a lot and I know the answer. Of course Delta does better vs AS in some markets where they have a natural strength or a much stronger presence vs one flight a day to SEA on AS. But that’s also not every market east of the Mississippi where the two carriers compete either on a nonstop or a nonstop vs a 1-stop.
Get a life. Your arguments are tired and just statements with no backing behind them. Speak with data or admit when you’re speculating like you are on your AS vs DL SEA-based routes.
the ONLY thing that is tiring is social media being taken over by people that can’t accept facts so manipulate data and real words and then accuse others of being argumentative.
DL doesn’t use the word monopoly because they have no monopoly hubs. None of the top 25 largest airports in the US are monopolies which encompasses virtually all airline hubs.
The closest thing to ‘monopolies’ is WN’s operation at MDW, DAL and HOU where they control 90% of the gates. and yet just one airline serves all 3 of those airports in addition to the primary airport in those cities and that is DL
If you actually would post a business dictionary definition of ‘monopoly’ you would know that you have been using it incorrectly and you argue a point that is factually inaccurate.
and if you really wanted to use your Diio account to illuminate instead of trying to win arguments by selective use of data, you would show AA, DL and UA’s market shares including boarding and revenue for each of their top 5 hubs – at the airport and in the metro areas – and you would see that UA’s local market revenue shares are not only higher than other airlines at their hub airports but in most cases in the metro areas by as wide of a margin as DL has at ATL, DTW, MSP and SLC.
but I know well that you wont post that data because it will disprove your own arguments and prove that I accurately discuss the airline industry.
AA, DL UA and WN all have strength markets with 50% plus passenger and/or revenue margins.
UA gets a higher share of its total revenue from its hubs than any of the big 4.
there are no monopolies in US airline markets and the DOJ intends to keep it that way.
There are substantial differences in the share of airlines in markets and metros and the percentage of revenue that comes from those strength markets.
It is actually UA that has more “monopolistic” practices in its network than AA DL or WN.
and SEA is a divided market just like BOS is; AS succeeds in some markets, DL succeeds in others. The advantages that AS has do not translate into success in the longhaul international market near as much as you or some people want to believe.
DL is no more likely to give an inch to AS in SEA than UA has to anyone else at ORD or IAD or any other market.
So much in your response that you’re just blatantly making up. Not even worth the reply.
A bit surprising that AS is adding SAN-ORD/PHX given that these are AA routes and AS currently sells them on their website to begin with. Granted it may be that they are trying to pick up some additional midwestern traffic that AA would carry either over PHX or ORD to connect to the AS flights, but if thats the case AS might be better suited adding/restarting SAN nonstops to OMA/MCI/STL/IND. They obviously are beefing up SAN, but there’s decent coverage by AS partners and lots of capacity by AA/UA/WN, but I’d think they’d want to take on the unserved/underserved markets first.
Add 3x/day Southwest flights from Chicago-SAN from MDW. Maybe by running 3x/day themselves, they will do better than 1x to SFO. We’ll see
I always thought the NAS flights were funny. Why on Earth would anybody on the west coast want to fly all that way to go to go there. An actual Caribbean route might be interesting, but not NAS.
“the new Denver route is served by American, Frontier, United, and Southwest,”
American does not fly to Denver from San Diego.
Scratching my head on SAN-ORD and PHX when AA partner is already serving with strong elite benefit reciprocity….unless AA is reducing frequency. Would rather see stronger service to another destination or additional destination.
Always like seeing AS expand in SAN, and would really like to see service to MSN or MKE. I would think that traffic would support service by an E175. Southwest already has limited seasonal service from MKE, and MSN has a west coast seasonal service to LAX on Breeze. DEN and PHX are surprising if AS is targeting SWA, and while I believe AS tried El Paso and Albuquerque pre-COVID, perhaps give these markets another try?
An airline that has embraced the Max is failing. Now there’s a surprise.