Alaska Air Adds Flights To Portland New Service Reflects Healthy Spokane Air Travel Market

Alaska Airlines is again expanding its presence in the booming Spokane air travel market, adding two non-stop flights to Portland this month.

The airline will add one round-trip flight daily between Spokane and Portland beginning Sunday, and a second daily round trip on Jan. 21.

Those flights will complement 12 daily round trip flights between Portland and Spokane being offered by Horizon Air, an Alaska subsidiary.

“The demand on that route is such that we feel we can fill a couple of flights a day with the bigger 140-passenger aircraft,” Alaska spokesman Greg Witter said Thursday.

The Portland flights combine with six daily Alaska flights between Spokane and Seattle to give the Seattle-based airline its biggest presence here since re-entering the market in August 1994.

Alaska withdrew from the Spokane market in June of 1993. At that time, its service had dwindled to four flights a day. The airline left the market to Horizon because Alaska’s cost structure was such that it could not afford to operate its full-sized jets on short haul routes.

The pullout coincided, though, with the explosion in air passenger traffic at Spokane International Airport that continues today. That growth was generated when first Morris Air and later Southwest Airlines came into the market with low fares that created a whole new class of air travelers.

Witter explained that Alaska’s success in reducing costs over the past three years has changed the picture drastically.

“It has given us tremendous flexibility that allows us to return to Spokane and complement what Horizon is doing,” Witter said.

During the past quarter, Alaska’s cost to fly one passenger one mile was 7.5 cents. That’s down 37 percent from 1992.

“That’s the most dramatic cost reduction for a single carrier in the history of commercial aviation,” Witter said.

Alaska cautiously re-entered the Spokane market with direct flights to Los Angeles and Oakland. Last year, it routed those flights through Seattle, restoring Spokane-Seattle service.

Horizon flies hourly between Spokane and both Seattle and Portland, but its biggest jets seat 62. Alaska flies MD-80s and Boeing 737s which seat 140.

“We feel like Horizon’s aircraft are well suited in terms of size for the market,” Witter said, “but we need plenty of seats to accommodate the growing demand. We are looking at a market that is absolutely mushrooming.”

Over the past three years, Spokane International has been among the fastest growing airports in the nation in terms of passenger traffic.

Spokane Airports Director John Morrison said the additional flights are “the tip of the iceberg” for airport activity in the coming year.

“We know this growth rate isn’t going to last forever, but we are still on the curve going up,” Morrison said. “We are working real hard to establish service to Calgary and Vancouver, and Horizon is extending the low fare concept from Spokane into Montana, which is very exciting.”

Alaska also announced Thursday that it will increase flights on its Seattle-Phoenix, Seattle-Los Angeles, Seattle-Anchorage, Portland-San Jose and San Francisco-Palm Springs routes.

, DataTimes