United Airlines announced it will start service to Paine Field next March. While that’s not a surprise, United’s chosen aircraft is a welcome and pain-free surprise.
Over a year ago, I wrote about United’s plan to return to Paine Field, the home of the Boeing 747, 767, 777, and 787 assembly plant, in Snohomish County just north of Seattle. Service was already supposed to have begun by now, but environmental impact studies delayed the resumption of commercial service.
But a new passenger terminal is near completion and both Alaska and United now have announced flight plans. With two flights from Denver and four from San Francisco, United will position itself to compete with Alaska for this potentially lucrative share of business:
|
Flight # |
Depart |
Time |
Arrive |
Time |
Aircraft |
|
5460 |
Denver |
9:25 a.m. |
Paine Field |
11:30 a.m. |
E175 |
|
5528 |
Denver |
7:15 p.m. |
Paine Field |
9:22 p.m. |
E175 |
|
5871 |
San Francisco |
11:00 a.m. |
Paine Field |
1:24 p.m. |
E175 |
|
5880 |
San Francisco |
12:45 p.m. |
Paine Field |
2:07 p.m. |
E175 |
|
5898 |
San Francisco |
4:15 p.m. |
Paine Field |
6:39 p.m.
|
E175 |
|
5883 |
San Francisco |
9:30 p.m. |
Paine Field |
11:54 p.m.
|
E175 |
We are still waiting for the schedule from Paine Field, but by working backwards you can expect early morning departures to both Denver and San Francisco, as well as two afternoon departures to SFO, and evening departures to both DEN and SFO.
The Aircraft
Travelers should be very happy that United will use an Embraer E175 for all flights to/from Paine Field. That aircraft has wi-fi onboard, comfortable economy and first class cabins, streaming IFE and w-fi, and larger overhead bins. In fact, I would argue that the E175 is more comfortable than many mainline aircraft.
I recently flew from Denver to Burbank, CA onboard a CRJ-200. Wow, that was difficult. 2.5 hours on that tiny aircraft left me very uncomfortable. The E175 will not cause similar issues, even in the main cabin.
CONCLUSION
I don’t know that I’ll ever personally have a reason to fly to Paine Field instead of Seattle/Tacoma International, but I know that thousands will appreciate the new service from Alaska and United. With both planning on E175s, customers need not worry about tiny and uncomfortable planes from PAE.
> Read More: United Returns to Historic Airport it Abandoned Decades Ago
image: United
Post-merger, United has had trouble (or little interest) in competing for business at secondary airports in major metro areas. Let’s hope the PAE “experiment” goes better and United is willing to invest the marketing resources and time it takes to get a new service off the ground, so to speak.
I was also shocked to see that. Wish we could get that kind of service ex-PWM!
Yeah, we were reminded about just how much of a difference there is between the Embraer 175 and Bombardier’s CRJ series was about six weeks ago when our LGA-RDU Delta Connection flight was aboard an EMB-175 and our return two days later RDU-EWR was a CRJ-900 – even in C+
Apart from the hard as a cement block (or those thick, wooden benches seen in most NYC Subway stations) seats that had our butts numb halfway down the taxiing ramp taken from Delta Terminal D at the far eastern end to the runway at the opposite (far western) end by the Marine Air Terminal (Runway 4-22) until after getting off the plane in RDU on the Embraer-175, the CRJ-900 we were on for the return, even with less hard seats that didn’t result in numb butts, was a plane I couldn’t get off fast enough with its 17” wide seats that had me squished between my partner and the sidewall most of the flights.
Thankfully, I was traveling with someone I know and love! But, much as we love each other, we found ourselves constantly shifting trying to find a comfortable position throughout the flight, and I would hate to have to deal with that with a stranger!
Ack!
By contrast, except for the hard as cement seats, we found the Embraer-175 to be a much better plane that we’d fly again (with perhaps BYO seat padding, ‘natch).
But we really would love to see all of those “RJ’s” disappear from the NYC-RDU sector and replaced with Delta’s new Airbus A220s since Jetblue’s Embraer 195s are still the best economy class options between NYC-RDU.
Only problem with JetBlue is its exceptionally limited schedule on that route – 2-3x daily makes it a much less desirable option than Delta’s robust offerings!
btw…We love JetBlue’s Embraer 195s because they have:
1.) soft, comfy, 2 x 2 seating at 32” pitch (or even more in the Even More Space rows!)
2.) Real seatback IFE with 36 channels of live tv! & movies!!! Sorry, folks, but that streaming to one’s own personal device crap is just that: useless crap.
For sure, we were reminded of that on those Delta Connection flights! Thankfully, they’re short flights – but short-, mid-, or especially long-haul, that streaming to one’s own device is nasty.
We hate it. Yeah, sure, a total “first world” problem.
But, if discussing the subject of inflight entertainment, that streaming IFE is cheap AF garbage by lazy, greedy, cheap AF, crappy airlines best avoided (when not Southwest, whose many other passenger friendly policies more than makes clear they’re NOT out to screw their guests/customers every which way by being cheap AF…and therefore makes that still vastly inferior and far less desirable IFE method somewhat tolerable 😉 )
The schedule to and from PAE can be looked up in the UA website plugging in random April dates.
The two gates will be very tightly scheduled. I expect delays. In the am, UA has two 6 am departures. AS’s first departure is 6:30 am so that’s 30 minutes to tow in a plane and load it. It gets worse in the evening as one AS flight has 15 minutes to unload and be towed out of the gate before the next flight gets in. There’s one instance that a gate gets free about 5 minutes before the next flight arrives.
Everything has to act like clockwork to work.
details (all flights Alaska/Horizon unless specified as UA)
towed in – 0600 UA SFO gate 1 (gate assignments are hypothetical)
towed in – 0600 UA DEN gate 2
towed in – 0630 PDX gate 1
towed in – 0700 LAX gate 2
towed in – 0730 SJC gate 1
towed in – 0800 SNA gate 2
towed in – 0830 SFO gate 1
PDX 0840 – 0920 LAS gate 2
LAX 1000 – 1040 SAN gate 2
SAN 1045 – 1125 LAX gate 1
UA DEN 1130 – 1210 UA SFO gate 2
SJC 1240 – 1320 PDX gate 1
UA SFO 1324 – 1400 UA SFO gate 2
LAX 1320 – 1400 SJC gate 1 (gate vacant immediately before this arrival)
SFO 1420 – 1500 SFO gate 1
UA SFO 1507 – 1545 UA DEN gate 1
LAS 1520 – 1600 LAX gate 2
PDX 1650 – 1730 LAS gate 1
SAN 1720 – 1800 PDX gate 2
LAX 1830 – 1910 LAX gate 1
UA SFO 1839 – 1915 UA SFO gate 2
PHX 1905 – 1945 SAN gate 1 (has to wait 5 min. for gate to vacate)
SLC 1955 – 2105 PDX gate 2
SFO 2025 – approx 2040 tow in – unreasonable 15 min, gate 1
SNA 2040 – approx 2130 tow, gate 1
UA DEN 2122 – gate 2 (gate is vacated only 17 min. before)
PDX 2235 – approx 2325 tow, gate 1
LAX 2250 – approx 2340 tow, gate 2
LAS 2325 – approx 0015 tow, gate 1 (0 minutes to spare)
UA SFO 2354 – gate 2 (vacated only 14 minutes before)
I should be sent to a mental hospital for writing the above details in the post
Nah, I appreciate your comments.
I recently flew from PAE. Looks like there are 3 gates, not 2. However, at gate 2B, there’s a walkway and a roped off path to the plane, not a jetway.
This means that the 24 departures are spread out on 3 gates while they can advertise to the county that only 2 gates and presumably less noise is created.
Gate 2B is probably used less than 8 times a day. Maybe 5-6.