Alaska Airlines adds a whopping 18 routes, 1 new destination – The Points Guy

Even though the summer travel season is in full swing, Alaska Airlines is already planning for what’s shaping up to be a busy winter.

The Seattle-based carrier announced Wednesday a major network expansion that includes 18 new routes, all but one of which will operate seasonally through the winter.

Alaska is even adding an all-new destination: Eagle, Colorado, which serves the nearby Vail resort — one of the preeminent ski destinations in the country. The airline will serve the area’s Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE) with three-times-weekly flights from San Diego and Seattle.

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Unless a competitor retaliates, Alaska will enjoy a monopoly on both routes to Vail.

Seven of the new routes will be operated by regional affiliates using the Embraer 175 aircraft, while the rest of the expansion will operate on mainline Boeing 737s.

You’ll find the full list of new routes below, but the overarching theme across the expansion is a focus on connecting travelers with popular leisure destinations in the winter.

This includes a mix of warm-weather destinations, such as Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, as well as those that will appeal to travelers who prefer winter activities and adventures, like Reno, Nevada, and Bozeman, Montana.

With this announcement, Alaska will become the largest U.S. carrier between the West Coast and Latin America. That’s thanks to new nonstop service to Liberia, Costa Rica, from San Francisco and Seattle. (Seattle is Alaska’s largest hub, and the city will now be home to a whopping 104 nonstop routes operated by Alaska.)

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The announcement comes just a week after Alaska unveiled a notable expansion in Mexico with new nonstop routes to La Paz and Monterrey.

For Alaska, this renewed focus on catering to leisure travelers comes as business traffic in some of the airline’s key hubs hasn’t completely recovered during the pandemic. For an airline with massive operations in San Francisco and Seattle, Alaska’s performance, at least for its business travel segment, is especially tied to major tech companies in the region, which haven’t been traveling as much as they did prepandemic.

In fact, many of these new routes are actually point-to-point routes between outstations. For instance, flights from Boise to Orlando, from New York to Puerto Vallarta and from St. Louis to Puerto Vallarta aren’t necessarily routes that would historically fit into Alaska’s network strategy.

But with business travel still not fully recovered, it seems sensible for Alaska to try some point-to-point leisure flying to see how it performs.

Alaska was even explicit in its announcement that these flights are for leisure travelers looking for “dream winter getaways.”

“We’re thrilled to offer convenient connection for guests across our network with this expansion—whether checking destinations off their bucket lists or setting off to their favorite winter getaways, we’ve put together an exciting range of options from tropical destinations across Mexico to the most popular ski slopes in North America,” said Kirsten Amrine, vice president of network planning and revenue management, in a statement.

All of the new routes will be available for sale by Thursday.