You might not have seen it since Alaska delayed its press release after last week’s tech problems, but Alaska has put out its big domestic plans for summer of 2026 and beyond. There is a whole lot of growth in both Portland and San Diego, and that has to come from somewhere. Los Angeles and San Francisco (and San Jose) will be down. I spoke with Kirsten Amrine, Vice President of Revenue Management and Network Planning, to get a clearer view of what all this means strategically.
Filling in the Blanks on San Diego
San Diego just opened its brand new Terminal 1, and that means it all-of-a-sudden has more capacity available. Get ready for at least a couple of years of Alaska and Southwest trying to beat each other over the head as they look to gain supremacy there.
In this particular announcement, San Diego will get five new year-round routes starting April 22 (except where noted):
- Dallas/Fort Worth
- Oakland
- Raleigh/Durham
- Santa Barbara
- Tulsa (starts March 18)
I saw Oakland and thought that sounded insane. After all, Southwest flies that market all the time with big airplanes. But as Kirsten explained it, this is really just about serving the 15 biggest markets from San Diego to make sure that Alaska can have broad appeal in the local market.
I went and pulled the data showing the top domestic markets from San Diego, and sure enough, this fits that pattern.
Top Markets from San Diego – 12 Months Ending June 2025
Data via Cirium
What doesn’t fit the pattern just beyond the top 15 where Alaska will abandon Atlanta from San Diego filed this week. Combined with the exit on Anchorage – Detroit, it looks like Alaska is trying to ease some of the fighting with Delta while building up everywhere else and challenging Southwest head-on.
All that being said, only two of the five new San Diego routes fall into the top 15 anyway. RDU is at 40, Tulsa is 78, and Santa Barbara barely even registers. I didn’t get into details on these with Kirsten too much, but I think RDU is just an appealing market demographically, Tulsa is about probably about balancing the new addition from Seattle to make the operation route better, and SBA is a market that has been served before and probably looks good enough to try again.
The Portland Bulk Up Continues
For years before and into the pandemic, all you saw was growth in Seattle as Alaska looked to win against Delta’s incursion and expand its network. Portland, a long-time hub, just sat there sad and alone waiting for some love. It has been getting it over the last year, and now it gets four more routes starting May 13, all summer seasonal except one:
- Baltimore
- Idaho Falls (year-round)
- Philadelphia
- St Louis
As you can see, it’s been quite the rise for Portland in the last year both in a growing number of destinations and frequencies after a long period of stagnation:
Alaska Departures and Destinations from Portland (PDX)
Data via Cirium
Alaska recently turned Portland into a more banked schedule, and it’s working well, Kirsten tells me. The results in PDX have been strong, so they just keep adding. Some of these are markets that have been served before. Some are not. But PDX seems to be really having a moment for Alaska right now.
With all of this growth, there had to be losers. Kirsten wanted to stress to me that the cuts that are coming in both Los Angeles and San Francisco are all about opportunity. It’s not that they wanted to leave these markets, but they really wanted to bulk up PDX and SAN. With only six B737s coming next year, they had to make hard decisions. So, they’ve thought about this strategically, trying to focus on markets that can be sacrificed.
What do I mean by that? Well, Kirsten noted that these are markets that have multiple competitors already. If Alaska leaves, it doesn’t create a vacuum. The airline can always go back in again in the future if it deems them worthy. It saw this as the lowest risk markets to leave in order to fund the growth elsewhere.
Los Angeles the Leisure Market
In LA, I was surprised to hear Kirsten describe the focus as being on the leisure market in the West and to Hawaiʻi. But sure enough, that is how Alaska is thinking about the LA market these days. It’s a far cry from Virgin America’s efforts before they were bought. There are a few things that will be moving in LA with some more minor trims. But what caught my eye was this.
Alaska is pulling out of LA to Las Vegas, Reno, and San Jose. The Embraers are getting cut back, and that makes sense. As LAX gets more and more expensive, it gets tougher to make money on a 76-seat jet in competitive markets where you aren’t going to get that high fare.
It’s not all doom and gloom. At the same time, the Embraer 175 will also leave LAX – San Francisco. That is a market that matters for Alaska, but it needs better seat economics. But there are more cuts.
LAX to Newark drops from 3x to 1x daily, and there are frequency cuts to both Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta. Cancún will go away during summer as well. These are leisure markets, but they are off peak. They’ll come back stronger in the winter. In the meantime, there will be a second daily LAX – Kahului during peak summer.
San Francisco Keeps a Western Focus
Up in San Francisco, the cuts just feel deeper. Kirsten says that they asked, “where do our Atmos elites fly? Top 10 destinations? We made sure we kept those.”
Hawaiʻi again does well with Kona and Līhuʻe going from a split 1x daily between the two of them to each operating 1x daily. But SFO does lose Austin, Boston, Burbank, and Newark with Orlando becoming summer-only. It sounds to me like Alaska is still trying to figure out who it wants to be in SFO when it grows up. For now, it has more important markets to watch.
These aren’t all of the changes, but they were the bigger trends. Seattle will get new service to Arcata/Eureka and Tulsa (about as far as an E175 can go from there). Alaska will also backfill Avelo’s departure by starting Santa Rosa – Ontario. And lastly, we will see a long-awaited Honolulu – Burbank route.
I had always been told that a MAX 8 couldn’t get off the shorter runway without a severe weight penalty, but Kirsten says that it’s actually better in summer than in winter. I assume that’s a wet runway thing. And the flight will leave at 7am, so it won’t be all that warm. This seems like a test, only operating in peak summer from May to Sep, but it’s a good test. I’m surprised Southwest didn’t do it first. But Alaska does seem to be pushing the envelope in its network strategy when it can. This is a good example.
