Sun Country Airlines is continuing its expansion beyond Minneapolis with service from Portland, Oregon to five new cities, including Honolulu.
If Portland sounds far from Minneapolis, it is…1,426 miles to be exact. But the “new” Sun Country is looking beyond the Twin Cities to create a sustainable budget airline. Attacking Alaska Airlines in its own backyard, though…is that smart?
> Read More: Can Sun Country Airlines Survive? I Doubt It.
> Read More: Sun Country Cuts The One Thing That Made It Special
Sun Country will launch service from Portland (PDX) to the following cities:
- Honolulu – HNL (4x weekly)
- Las Vegas – LAS (4x weekly)
- Phoenix – PHX (4x weekly)
- Palm Springs – PSP (2x weekly)
- Reno – RNO (2x weekly)
Service will begin late this autumn. Here are the new schedules:
Honolulu: Starts November 14, 2018 (Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday)
PDX-HNL: SY791 10:00 AM – 1:50 PM
HNL-PDX: SY792 3:20 PM – 10:50 PM
Palm Springs: Starts November 1, 2018 (Thursday, Sunday)
PDX-PSP: SY691 2:35 PM – 4:50 PM
PSP-PDX: SY692 5:45 PM – 8:10 PM
Las Vegas: Starts November 1, 2018 (Thursday, Friday, Sunday, Monday)
PDX-LAS: SY683 8:25 AM – 10:30 AM
LAS-PDX: SY684 11:25 AM – 1:40 PM
Phoenix: Starts November 14, 2018 (Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Monday)
PDX-PHX: SY685 7:00 AM – 10:30 AM
PHX-PDX: SY686 11:25 AM – 1:05 PM
Reno/Tahoe: Starts November 16, 2018 (Friday, Monday)
PDX-RNO: SY687 2:05 PM – 3:25 PM
RNO-PDX: SY688 4:20 PM – 5:45 PM
More Expansion?
Sun Country already began service between Los Angeles and Honolulu and yesterday announced service to Florida from Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), St. Louis (STL), and Madison, Wis (MSN). These will be seasonal twice-weekly flights to Ft. Myers (RSW) and Tampa (TPA).
To meet staffing needs for these new routes, Sun Country is hiring 125 flight attendants, about 100 pilots. It is also leasing five additional aircraft.
CONCLUSION
Sun Country’s expansion in Portland (it currently only flies between Portland and Minneapolis) is bold. If Alaska view Sun County as an annoyance rather than a threat, I predict Sun Country will do well in PDX. But if Alaska decides to further ramp up service and initiate a fare war, only consumers will win…
It will be interesting to see if, as an ULCC, they can make Hawaii work where Allegiant couldn’t.
Call me a pessimist, but I really don’t see how this can end well for Sun Country. The Pacific Northwest can be fiercely loyal to AS. Add in the limited frequencies they plan to offer and I just don’t get the strategy here. Only time will tell, I suppose
Remember the movie Battleship? Yeah it was terrible no scratch that really terrible.
But there is that one scene at the end where the aliens think they have the Mighty Mo dead to rights and end up getting the ever loving you know what kicked out of their mother ship.
That’s going to be Sun Country. They may think they have found a place where they can quietly steal a little revenue from an established and distracted (by a merger that isn’t going smoothly and the fight with Delta in SEA) airline. But Alaska I would strongly bet is going to go nuclear on them. They know Sun Country is struggling and they know there is blood in the water.
As Bugs Bunny says “you’ll be sorrrrrryyyy!!”
If you know anything about Portland you know that PDX plays at BEST second fiddle to the mighty fortress hub in Seattle that Alaska maintains. Ever since Delta created their SEA hub Alaska has largely focused on SEA and thrown PDX customers a few scraps here and there. Please don’t overplay this whole Pacific NW Alaska Airlines loyalty notion…it’s not what it used to be. I live in Portland and exclusively fly Delta…and enjoy the international non-stops they offer me to Asia and Europe out of PDX.
I’m all for Sun Country entering the PDX market and perhaps shaking things up. I’m willing to bet that a customer will pay $49 to $59 one way to fly on a Sun Country Boeing 737 to go from Portland to Reno as opposed to paying perhaps more and climbing aboard a Horizon Q400 for the same flight (particularly given ALL of Horizon’s woes of the last year and a half). Also keep in mind that the head route planner at Sun Country came from a similar position at Alaska Airlines…you think he might know some things about the untapped potential of the Portland market…naysayers get your facts together before dooming these service additions!
Correction to the article…stated Sun Country presently only has flights from PDX to Minneapolis, incorrect…seasonal flights are currently operating between PDX and Orlando as well.