We’ve seen bits and pieces of Alaska’s plans for its integration with Hawaiian, but this weekend the airline loaded its first major schedule shift. A whole lot of airplanes are moving around, and the end result is much better utilization. Thanks to Cirium data, it was easy for me to take a deeper look with ease.
The headlines you’ve heard are that Hawaiian will start 1x daily from Seattle to Tokyo/Narita and next summer it will fly 2x daily on Seattle – Anchorage. That is indeed true, all with A330s. The Narita flight is being shifted from Honolulu to Seattle. And on Seattle – Anchorage, Alaska is able to take those two A330 flights and have them replace four 737s. But that was just the beginning.
Let’s take a look at a map of all flying west of the Rockies to Hawaiʻi on both Alaska and Hawaiian. I’ll explain the colors down below.
Map was created using Doughton Data Solutions service. doughtondata.com
© OpenStreetMap, stock.adobe.com
The lines in gray show routes where there is no frequency or aircraft change, and only one airline is currently operating the route anyway. Just ignore those for now, but I wanted to just show the scale of how many routes there are in the combined network.
All of those pinkish routes are ones that have now been abandoned by Alaska and are being completely operated by Hawaiian.
- LAX – Honolulu goes from 2x daily Hawaiian A330s, 1x daily Hawaiian 787, and 1x daily Alaska 737 to 1x daily Hawaiian A330, 2x daily Hawaiian 787s, and 1x daily Hawaiian A321
- LAX – Kahului has its 1x weekly Alaska 737 canceled while the 1x daily Hawaiian A330 remains as is
- Portland (OR) – Honolulu goes from 1x daily Alaska 737 and 1x daily Hawaiian A330 to 3x daily Hawaiian A321s
- San Diego – Honolulu goes from 1x daily Alaska 737 and 1x daily Hawaiian A330 to 2x daily Hawaiian A321s
- San Francisco – Honolulu goes from 2x daily Alaska 737s and 1x daily Hawaiian A330 to 1x daily Hawaiian A321 and 1x daily Hawaiian A330
- San Francisco – Kahului has its 1x weekly Alaska 737 canceled while the 1x daily Hawaiian A321 remains as is
- San Jose – Honolulu has its 1x daily Alaska 737 canceled while the 1x daily Hawaiian A321 remains as is
- San Jose – Kahului has its 1x weekly Alaska 737 canceled while the 1x daily Hawaiian A321 remains as is
On the surface, this is a mixed bag. In some cases, it is a clear decrease in capacity, like on San Jose or San Francisco to Honolulu. In other cases, this is just an optimizing of aircraft, as is the case in San Diego. And still elsewhere, this is a real benefit, as we saw with Portland – Honolulu going from 2x to 3x daily flights. (Though if you like the flat bed, you won’t be happy there… it’s gone.) We’ll talk about that more later.
The dark blue routes are those which go in the opposite direction, switching to being operated solely by Alaska.
- Portland (OR) – Kahului goes from 1x daily Hawaiian A321 and 1x daily Alaska 737 to 2x daily Alaska 737s
- LAX – Kona goes from 1x daily Hawaiian A330 to 1x daily Alaska 737
This is not a long list. Presumably, this is just beneficial for routing purposes in the early days since we know in the long run everything will be operated under the Hawaiian brand.
We also have two new routes joining the network, both San Francisco – Līhu’e (3x weekly) and Kona (4x weekly) will run on Alaska 737s.
Finally, we have two Seattle routes that will remain mixed.
- Seattle – Honolulu already had two of its six daily Alaska 737s converted to Hawaiian A330s. Now there will be a third Hawaiian A330 and 1x daily Hawaiian A321. Two Alaska 737s remain.
- Seattle -Kahului doesn’t change, but it will (for now) keep 1x daily Hawaiian A321 and 3x daily Alaska 737s.
This isn’t just about the aircraft type, but it’s also about flight times. For example, Portland had departures to Honolulu at 8:05am on Alaska and 10:50am on Hawaiian with returns that overlapped at 1pm and 2:10pm. Now it will have departures at 7am, 10:25am, and 5:55pm to Honolulu with returns now spread out at 8:10am, 1:35pm, and 10pm. There is much more choice for customers, but this also lets the airline utilize its airplanes better.
Maybe that’s not the best example since it actually gets an additional flight in the market. How about Portland – Kahului? It had flights to Maui at 7am and 9:45am with returns at 12:50pm and 4:35pm. Now it will fly at 7:45am and 5:45pm with returns at 11:40am and 9:40pm. That’s more choice for customers based on flight times alone.
Even in markets that lose frequency, it’s usually just overlapping flight times anyway. Look at San Francisco – Honolulu which drops from three to two daily. It had departures to Honolulu at 9:50am, 11:25am, and 5:59pm with returns at 1:10pm, 1:30pm, and 9:35pm. Now it’ll have flights at 9:35am and 7:45pm to Honolulu and back at 1:30pm and 9:20pm. The time-of-day coverage is basically the same, but this enables Alaska to get much better utilization out of the fleet.
Most of the Hawaiian A321s, as an example, fly from the islands in the afternoon, arriving on the mainland in the evening. Then they stay overnight and fly back in the morning. With the ability to support multiple frequencies in more markets, Alaska can run airplanes in late morning to the mainland where they can turn in the evening, then come back on a redeye and be ready for a morning westbound.
I had thought that Alaska would be increasing utilization of the aircraft once they got to the mainland, but that’s probably not easy to do until the airlines are combined and have a single pilot workgroup. Then there will be opportunity to squeeze even more out. (And if you’re reading, Alaska, we could use a flight from Long Beach up to Seattle… there’s gotta be a slot we can find. Just sayin’.)
Of course, you can’t just schedule these airplanes to fit the operation perfectly without thinking about the commercial side of the equation. Yes, the bar will probably be lower now that unit costs should go down. And yes, with multiple frequencies, there is more interest in having varying flight times. That’s especially true when you take connectivity into account from the rest of the mainland. It’s a bet I would take, but the proof will be in the pudding.
43 comments on “Alaska and Hawaiian Start to Move Metal Around”
I was looking forward to this post! Knew you’d come through with some good Cirium data. It’ll be interesting to follow up in a year and a half when they’re legally and laborly a single carrier, and with a meaningful 787 fleet. In the meantime it wouldn’t shock me at all to see sub-daily flights to secondary cities in the west.
On first glance it looks like SEA-ANC is decreased significantly even with the A330s, from 24 to 18. Any idea if there’s actually a decrease in seats out of ANC, or if those seats have just been redeployed to PDX connections or other direct flights? Or maybe I’m just comparing incomparable dates.
Eric – Flights in Seattle – Anchorage for next July changed less than that. Alaska cut 4 737s and replaced that with 2 Hawaiian A330s. It dropped from having 22 daily filed down to 18. No other changes in ANC were made, but we’re still pretty far out. Things will presumably continue to shift.
Serious question regarding your last paragraph: To what extent does Alaska/Hawaiian have to consider connecting pax when determining flight times from US West Coast to Hawaii, and how many of its pax on those flights are connecting to (say) points east of the Rockies? Do connecting pax matter less to Alaska/Hawaiian than they do to other major US airlines?
I haven’t seen the hard data on this, so perceptions may be wrong, but (as a person who has lived all over the US, but primarily east of the Mississippi River) I perceive Alaska and Hawaiian as primarily West Coast airlines, with relatively few flights that both start & end within the eastern half of the CONUS (similar to how JetBlue has historically been the opposite, with as many of its flights touch at least one of: greater BOS area, greater NYC metro area, FL, and/or US East Coast).
(Another way to put it: Most flyers based on the East Coast would probably be surprised to see an Alaska/Hawaiian flight show up as option for a trip that doesn’t involve Seattle/Alaska/Hawaii.)
I know that there have historically been some VERY long distance domestic CONUS flights for both Alaska & Hawaiian (e.g., BOS to Hawaii and SEA [ANC?] to FL), but (not saying this makes sense) I’m curious to what extent we’ll see management at the combined company (1) focus on bringing more pax from East of the Rockies to its West Coast hubs, en route to Alaska/Hawaii/Asia (as was aluded to in the podcast), and (2) use efficiencies to do more flying entirely within the eastern 2/3 of the CONUS, even if just opportunistically.
Add east coast to PDX and California and you will have an accurate representation of AS/HA east coast pressesnce. Other than that their only service from east ifnthe Mississippi has been ORD-BOI, a few less than daily winter services to Mexico routes, a deep winter CLE-PIT as part of a round robin from SEA, and AS briefly had LGA-FL/DAL service after the VS acquisition.
They have never flown ANC-FL.but they do have a seasonal ANC-JFK (8hr 15min on a 737!)
Kilroy – According to DOT data from Q2 of this year, Alaska had about 42% of traffic on Seattle – Honolulu connecting. The biggest markets in order were: Spokane Atlanta Salt Lake Boise Chicago Minneapolis Anchorage Detroit Pasco Boston
For Hawaiian, 20% of traffic is connecting, but that’s all going beyond Honolulu to the neighbor islands and Pago Pago primarily. Combine that together and connections should go up. All those Hawaiian loyalists in the islands that are usually flying United or maybe Alaska to get elsewhere on the east coast will now be more likely to fly Alaska/Hawaiian.
Thanks for the info. It makes sense that most of biggest origin cities for pax connecting through SEA to HNL for flights on Alaska would be in the northern part of the country, but it’s very interesting nonetheless to see so much connecting traffic from DL hubs given DL’s presence at Seattle.
I was also surprised to see Pasco in there; not super familiar with the NW area of the country and had to look that one up on the map (though I’m still not quite sure I understand the Pasco/Hawaii connection).
Just hazarding a guess on PSC-HNL traffic, but Pasco is the airport serving the Tri-cities of Washington. Richland, WA (another tri-city) is home to Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the Department of Energy; turns out that the Tri-cities population is about half that of the Spokane metro.
More surprising to me is the number of larger cities (with other options to get to HNL,) on the list between Spokane, Boise and Tri-cities (all of which are natural spokes to a SEA hub) that generate more traffic through SEA than PSC. Probably should look at what percentage of traffic between those city-pairs AS is capturing. It might just be that top 10 is actually getting down to pretty low levels of traffic.
Although it’s counter intuitive, if you trace great circle routes from NY, Boston and Washington to Hawaii SEA is not far off the route and PDX is close to it. SEA and PDX are not bad connecting points to the east coast
Absolutely, through I’m surprised that NYC and DC aren’t on that list.
For the same reason (GC paths), ANC was commonly used as a fuel stop for pax planes in the past, and is one of the busiest cargo airports in the world; it’s roughly equidistant between NYC & Tokyo and < 2% off of the GC route between the two (even less so when planes have to avoid Russian airspace). Most air cargo that is time sensitive enough to avoid a stop/layover in places like ANC and save a day or two is usually carried in the bellies of long distance pax flights at a premium price ("IATA Direct" vs "CONSOL" air cargo services).
I poked around on GC Map long enough this morning to learn some fun geography trivia: Most of Alaska is closer to northeast Japan than to the Northeast US, and a fair bit of Alaska is closer to Tokyo than NYC. Always fun playing with the GC Map tool.
Pasco is an odd one on that list.
In their press release about revised schedules they explicitly mentioned connectivity beyond the West Coast, so I think they’re definitely going for it.
Losing AUS-HNL aside, I’d very much like well-timed LAX or SAN connections to Hawaii. LAX for widebodies, SAN for avoiding LAX.
In the case of San Francisco, United has it’s west coast gateway there so of course they would be flying those routes along side Alaska.
Alaska noted at their recent investor day presentation that they are converting PDX from a rolling hub, to a banked hub.
Having PDX-HNL go from two daily flights, to three daily flights, must be a part of that process.
Speaking of LGB. According to the AS peep in LGB. They been hearing that the A321 MX facility in LGB will be relocated to PDX.
Also LGB-OGG being dropped.
The A321 at LGB will be used on longer missions. Alaska 737 will replace the A321 in LGB.
The new rumor flight times.
HNL-LGB
00:40-08:00
LGB-HNL
17:00-21:10
New SEA service.
LGB-SEA
09:00-12:05
SEA-LGB
13:00-15:45
That’s downright impressive utilization.3.5h on the ground in HNL (curfews in LGB I’m guessing?) but the other turns are 60m, 55m, and 75m for a total block time utilization of 17.33h per day on a narrowbody.
The 330s doing SEA-ANC runs in the summer should have even more impressive utilization stats.
Impressive utilization for sure, but HNL-LGB becoming a redeye would be a real stinker. Especially when AS has nothing else to feed to at LGB (other than SEA which could just be flown nonstop instead).
When WN has a normally timed HNL-LGB flight and every carrier/time is available at LAX, a redeye feels like it’ll fall off a cliff.
Brendan – Agreed, this would be a bad idea. Alaska has been pretty careful with these moves so far to ensure that if there is a redeye in a West Coast market, it’s in addition to the standard afternoon departure. The morning west/afternoon east pattern is by far the most preferred by those on the West Coast, and going to a redeye-only schedule would ensure the death of the LGB flight if it were to happen.
LGB-SEA is glaring hole.
Any thoughts on if Alaska will make efforts to return to being an all Boeing fleet?
They did so with their Virgin acquisition, but I sense it will be more difficult with Hawaiian due to both wide and narrow bodies.
I’d imagine such an effort is lower down on the priority list right now and further out in time.
Keep up the great work!
Given Boeing’s seemingly perpetual troubles, I seriously doubt that the new-and-improved Alaska will even try to go all-Boeing again.
If you haven’t listened to The Air Show interview with CEO Ben Minicucci, you should. Ben talked about that a fair bit. (theairshowpodcast.com or wherever you listen)
Believe CEO Ben (not gonna try to spell his last name) said on Brett’s podcast that the A321 is needed for missions such as LAS-Hawaii which the Maxes cannot handle. There are definitely missions for the 321 within the combined network and that’s without even sending it to DCA to expand capacity.
I’m still really confused about how this is all going to work out. So when Alaska does long-haul, it will be with Hawaiian planes, and this will be the case even after the routes reorganization (i.e. anything that doesn’t touch Hawaii is Alaskan, and anything that touches Hawaii is Hawaiian)? Like, wouldn’t it be confusing for passengers to take an Alaskan flight from Seattle to Tokyo, only to see that their plane is a Hawaiian 787 with Hawaiian branding, Hawaiian service, and Hawaiian livery? Especially when the plan is for these plans to alternate between Hawaii and non-Hawaii service when needed? Doesn’t seem to be practical or cheap to have planes switch back and forth between Hawaiian and Alaskan liveries either.
MK03 – We don’t know yet, but my assumption is that they either fly in some kind of hybrid livery or Alaska decides that really doesn’t matter. The paint on the airplane makes no difference. On the inside, they can tailor the experience pretty easily without touching the hard product. Change mood lighting between purple/pinks and cool blues. Have the flight attendants wearing different uniforms, and have different food/snacks/drinks onboard. That wouldn’t be all that hard.
Alaska promised Hawaii that they would maintain Hawaiian branding so that Hawaii would support the merger. I’m sure that Alaska will give it a solid try. And given that it takes time to get to a single operating certificate and to merge the labor groups, they will maintain the branding for a while. But for a ton of reasons I cannot believe that there will be a dedicated fleet for Hawaii (other than possibly intra-Hawaii flying). They are going to want to flow the aircraft elsewhere in USA or Asia and not have aircraft dedicated to flying to/from Hawaii. Putting the A330 on SEA-ANC and SEA-NRT is a prime example of that. As CF said, I can see them adjusting the soft product for the routes and having a brand for the service. But the aircraft need to go where the demand is by season and where operational considerations make sense.
Maybe a dumb question, but can anyone explain the ANC-SEA market to me? It always amazes me how many seats that market can support… I get that its an isolated state, there are no options other than flying, Seattle is the geographically closest lower 48 city, etc. Still, that’s gotta be one of the highest capacity domestic city pairs in America and Anchorage isn’t THAT big (nor is Seattle, for that matter, relative to other West Coast metros). I’d think a good portion of the southbound traffic is connecting beyond to SF, LA, etc. which only have a small fraction of the non-stop seats.
Feels like the east coast equivalent would be SJU-MIA, but even that route doesn’t have such a massively high percentage of all seats leaving SJU.
Sam – A few things to consider here. First, it is a HIGHLY seasonal market. This past July had more than 146,000 seats in one direction with both Alaska and Delta flying it, but here in December it’s just under 80,000. In summer, a lot of that is tourism with huge one way demand on cruise traffic. It’s just a completely different market in the summer.
That being said, there are still a surprising number of seats in winter.
Certainly local demand is a big part of that since it is the only real lifeline in and out of the state. Definitely don’t underestimate the importance of cargo. But also, don’t underestimate the competitive nature at a dual hub in Seattle. Delta has 4x daily in winter. Does that make sense? No way. There are winter months where Delta doesn’t even clear 70% loads. But if you want to be a player in Seattle, you have to do it.
As CF said, there is strong seasonality on the route. The summer has a lot of tourism and cruise business. But year-round for all intents and purposes Seattle is the source of supply and services to Alaska. There are a ton of business and personal connections between Seattle and Alaska. Alaskans come to Seattle to shop and get medical care that’s not available there. Engineering, banking, legal services. Repairs for the fishing fleet. There’s just a ton of reasons people travel to/from Seattle.
How does the AS alliance with American fit into all this?
JohnG – We don’t know. Alaska provides a huge benefit to American with West Coast presence, but now with Seattle – Asia, is Alaska trying to compete too much with AA for it to be ok with the arrangement? It remains to be seen.
Could we see Alaska leave Oneworld & return to Skyteam? Skyteam provides more connections out of Seattle than Oneworld especially over the pacific.
SEAN – No way. Not unless Delta decides it wants to give up on Seattle and LA.
Sean I don’t think AS was ever in Skyteam, for a long long time they were doing bi-lateral agreements, and you could bank both AA and DL miles on Alaska. I used that to my advantage for a very long time; could take whatever the work travel agent gave me for trips (and with the exception of WN) either bank the frequent flier miles on AS Mileage Plan or UL MileagePlus. My understanding it was DL that decided to run it’s own domestic feed on primarily DL metal into SEA and initiated the backing out of the bi-lateral with AS (which has made them the one airline in the US I avoid like the plague because of my sunk cost loyalty to AS and UL). So it would seem like, as CF observes, the ball’s in Delta’s court to no longer contest SEA with AS.
I suspect the more interesting question is whether as AS builds out an international hub in SEA which, others observed is actually well situation for great circle distance to NRT/HND to a lot of the US, whether JL pushes for AS to be the primary US Oneworld carrier to the Asia/Pacific and let AA focus on Europe and South America to US. Still early, AS needs to demonstrate that it can make those SEA/NRT flights work; but I think there is a huge opportunity for AS/JL using NRT as an NE Asia connecting hub to compete and win with DL/KR/OZ and UL/AN. Also maybe we can finally see my favorite connect two dots flight of PDX-CTS since Portland/Sapporo are sister cities.
AS is going to use SEA as a TPAC hub, not NRT. It would be insane to start anything in NRT when DL is well ahead of them in SEA for longhaul (better network TPAC/TATL, planes have a better J/Y+/Y configuration than AS).
Also, UL MileagePlus? You mean United Airlines/UA? UL is Sri Lankan if we’re talking IATA.
Yes you’re right UA (I tend to think in ICAO: UAL/RJAA but this is more of an IATA crowd here).
And yes, I get that AS is going to hub their TPAC operations out of SEA and needs to build out that international product there. It’s a big change they are taking about in going from a US focused carrier to competing more directly with the UA/DL/AA in the international space. What I was trying to say, is that initially I could see them trying for tighter integration in OneWorld with JL at NRT to flow US customers onward to a lot of secondary NE Asian markets.
Clearly the initial runs with HA A330 will have the product as is, but I would expect AS will be thinking about where they go with the product in later 787 delivers. I would expect them to introduce a new Alaska branded international product that specifically is designed to compete favorably with DL out of SEA. I will observe that JL is a bit different in that they configure their 787s 2-4-2 in economy. Having flown both DL A350 and JL 787 recently in economy and economy plus; I will say I like the JL offering better, can a US airline make a 2-4-2 Y cabin work? I don’t know, who knows if AS would even try that. But I think it is good for us that we potentially have a new international entrant in the US who could shake things up. At the very least this seems like a way more promising path to sustainable international flying than B727s to Vladvostok and the Kamtchka Peninsula.
It seems Alaska has lots of uses for aircraft larger than a 737. Doesn’t it make you wonder why they didn’t order some years ago?
Costs. Adding a new airplane is expensive. Especially if it’s a small fleet.
If you’ve bought the fleet, and it isn’t too expensive to own, it’s worth keeping.
As an Alaska loyalist we typically fly AS to the islands, but if it’s to HNL it’s sometimes HA just for the A330. It’s nice because of the 2-4-2 configuration in coach. Just flew SAN-OGG on the A321 and even the pair of seats available at an additional cost were uncomfortable. Switching both flights SAN-HNL to A321’s is a capacity and equipment downgrade so too bad so sad for us unless we spring for the F cabin.
Alaska’s margins are comparable to Delta’s, so I think it will be an effective competitor internationally from Seattle, especially since Alaska has many more connecting opportunities. I can envision a Asian scenario where Delta and Sky Team focuses on Incheon, Haneda, Beijing Daxing, and Shaghai, while Alaska and oneworld focus on Tokyo (JAL could theoretically move a Heneda slot to avoid Godzilla) Beijing Capital (via code share with Hainan), Guangzhou and/or Hong Kong. I seem to remember that American was going to fly to Shanghai, but maybe it will let Alaska do that.
On the European front, Alaska and Delta can simply fly to partner hubs initially and expand from there.
In Oceania, Alaska will have oneworld partners Qantas, Fiji and Air Tahiti Nui, in addition to its service via Honolulu.
American seems content to let its partners do much of the heavy lifting internationally, and seeing its debt and fleet situation, I don’t see that changing soon.
There has been no discussion of Hawaiian flying from Anchorage…..It seems a good fit for A330. Alaska flies to HNL, OGG and KOA. Seems like a 330 could be added to that route and move people on connection interisland traffic. Maybe 330 to HNL and 737 to Kona would improve utilization of the 330’s
How does this all comply with their commitment to the DOT?
One topic I have not seen mentioned is integration of the frequent flyer programs and matching elite benefits. To date there has been little information from Alaska on this topic beyond saying that they will maintain a Hawaii component to the program for Hawaii residents (they have something like that for Alaska residents, too). But at the moment there is no status matching and elite benefits don’t extend to the other carrier. This is going to be a major pain point for travelers who find their flight switched between carriers. They may be entitled to free checked bags or Premium class seats and first class upgrades. As I understand it, right now even if you are top elite on Alaska, you get nothing when you fly on Hawaiian. And if you are a lounge member, you cannot access Hawaiian’s lounges. That is a bit of a mess for the elite status and credit card members. Alaska has to address this before they roll out the mixed metal service. This could be something worth digging into.
Seems to me Alaska is early enough in the delivery cycle of the 787 should the new merger management run the numbers and reconsider a go with the common pilot type rated to the A330, more capable A350 XWB.
For this I am sure Boeing would gladly take Alaska Air Group’s inherited 787 orders for more of the MAX to replace both the 787 and the A321 and thus save on training and re-fleeting expenses. Fleet rationalization is in order and finding the most cost effective way of doing so will definitely be in the plans of AAG as they continue to recalibrate maximum competitive efficiency and economic return upon this merger.
Not saying this will happen of course, but 24 passenger wide-bodies is a lot of wide-bodies to replace with no commonality towards the 787 or Amazon Cargo fleet. Just my thoughts and my thoughts alone.