Alaska made me happy last week. The airline announced it would finally return to Long Beach after an absence of more than ten years. But you don’t care if I’m happy, right? What you care about is… why am I writing about one lousy new route? Trust me, there’s something more interesting here than just a single route. It’s a window into something bigger.
Long Beach and Alaska have a long history with each other, most notably thanks to Alaska’s purchase of locally-based Jet America in the 1980s. Though Alaska abandoned most of that network, it did fly to its home in Seattle for many years on a mix of MD-80s and B737s. In early 2009, it put a B737-700 into Portland as well.
It was late-2009 when Alaska decided the right way to serve this market was instead with a CRJ-700, both to Portland and Seattle. In hindsight… no it wasn’t. I remember flying that long flight on a small, single-class airplane thinking… why wouldn’t I just fly JetBlue?
Portland made it until August 2014 before it disappeared. Then in January 2015, Alaska left Long Beach entirely by ending Seattle. Even though slots had become available at various times, Alaska never came back. That’s not a surprise since it didn’t have a good experience the first time around.
No, I’m not talking about any relationship drama or anything. It was just good ole’ terrible financial performance. Take a look at the average fares on Alaska from the five main SoCal airports to Seattle over the years…
DOT O&D Alaska Average Fare by Year LGB-SEA via Cirium
Not only was Alaska high unit-cost airplanes with no premium cabin, but the fares were also very low. This is what happens when you try to compete with JetBlue in Long Beach. Fares generally aren’t good.
A lot has changed since that time. JetBlue has packed up and left LGB, and Southwest has taken over as the primary tenant with nearly all the slots to its name. So why would Alaska now be interested in going back to Long Beach? I can think of several reasons.
1) Alaska already flies there
What? I know, that sounds stupid, but Alaska bought Hawaiian, and Hawaiian has served Long Beach from both Honolulu and Kahului for years. Hawaiian opened an A321 maintenance base at LGB, so it has a key role for the airline’s Airbus fleet. Further, LGB works much better to Hawaiʻi than other destinations because you canʻt fly there from Orange County due to technical reasons. So people who would normally choose SNA flock to LGB specifically for the trip to the islands, and that has kept Hawaiian there.
With a maintenance base and existing operation, it should be a whole lot easier to justify adding a couple of flights to Seattle. It helps you get better utilization on the ground, and it probably makes it easier to shuttle intra-company cargo to the maintenance base when needed.
2) Nobody else flies to Seattle… until August
In the dying days of JetBlue’s Long Beach operation in 2020, Seattle hung in there almost until the end. But once JetBlue left, no airline came back in to serve Seattle until just recently. Southwest has never been very strong between SoCal and the Pacific Northwest, so it wasn’t even willing to give it a try from Long Beach. Only recently did it file plans to start Seattle 6x weekly starting in August. Alaska does not want to give Southwest even the smallest bit of daylight in the SoCal – Seattle market, so it is going to try and slam that door shut as quickly as possible by competing head-on.
3) Seattle is a much bigger hub
It’s hard to remember a time before Delta, but when Delta threatened Alaska’s hub dominance in Seattle, Alaska responded. July 2025 had about 50 percent more departing seats for Alaska compared to July 2014, the last summer the LGB flight operated. In other words, there will be more connecting opportunities now to help fill that airplane. Yes, most of the domestic connections don’t make sense, but there is the Pacific Northwest. And now, there’s also Asia and Europe. Plus, Alaska is a part of oneworld this time, meaning there are even more connections that are possible to other partners.
4) Alaska looks at the LA Basin differently
Alaska has long served secondary airports in the LA Basin regularly, but the strategy has changed. After buying Virgin America, LAX took on a more prominent role in the network. But Alaska has spent a lot of time refocusing on those secondary airports. In 2014, Alaska only served Burbank, Ontario, and Orange County from Portland and Seattle. Today, you’ll find at least one of those airports having service to Boise, Eugene, Honolulu, Redmond/Bend, San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Spokane, and Tucson.
Alaska has learned what Southwest learned long ago, that having service at the secondary airports can also help the overall standing in the region. That helps the airline’s LAX service, especially since its weaker position there isn’t going to otherwise win head-to-head versus the big guys. Connecting Long Beach into the hub can help gain more local loyalty that can spread to LAX when plans require heading up there.
5) Slots were available
This one seems obvious, but Long Beach has added supplementary slots over the years, and Southwest kept scooping them up. But Southwest realized it had more than it needed, so it gave back five supplementary slots. At the same time, Delta decided it needed one less slot, so it gave up a single permanent one. The result? Nobody else wanted them except for Alaska, which picked up one from each. Four remain available, which says something about demand in this market.
With all of this coming together, Alaska is back in the airport with 2x daily B737-900ERs starting on September 8. That is obviously a lot more seats than the last time Alaska was in Long Beach. Does all of this mean it’s going work this time? Absolutely not. But there are plenty of reasons for Alaska to at least take the swing and see how it plays out.
