Alaska Airlines announced 18 new, and somewhat surprising routes for travel to sandy and snowy destinations this winter. These new routes will criss-cross the continent with flights to Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, and the United States.
When you consider that Alaska is primarily known for being a west coast carrier, some of these routes are pretty surprising. The flights from New York-JFK, St. Louis (STL), and Kansas City (MCI) to Puerto Vallarta (PVR) stand out to me the most, especially considering Alaska will be the only airline flying between New York State and PVR. You know, that’s a route you’d expect from an airline named after the 49th state.
When describing the new service, Alaska’s Vice President of Network Planning and Revenue Management, Kirsten Amrine had this to say:
“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.”
Kristen Amrine, Alaska VP of Network Planning and Revenue Management
This is quite an impressive expansion from Alaska, including three new destinations with Vail (EGE), La Paz (LAP), and Monterrey (MTY), though La Paz and Monterrey were both announced last week.
New Routes and Destinations This Winter
While some of these routes seem like a no-brainer, there are others that I’m skeptical about and a few that leave me scratching my head. Before diving into that, the routes, frequencies, dates, and equipment are listed below.
While I won’t dive into all of these, I do want to call out a couple of them. First of all, I think anything to Vail during ski season is going to be a winner. Flying 3x weekly from both San Diego and Seattle will give almost all Alaska flyers one stop options to get to the slopes. Operating with an E175, they will also likely fill a decent chunk of the plane with local traffic from Seattle and San Diego.
Routes such as Boise-Orlando and Sacramento-Orlando running sub-daily may seem odd at first glance but the airline as quietly built up its presence in Boise (BOI) and Sacramento is located close to Alaska’s hubs in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco to make connections easy for travelers who need to fly on days the direct service isn’t operating.
Finally, there are a few of these that I was surprised to see and I’m still somewhat confused by. The flights to Puerto Vallarta (PVR) and Cancun (CUN) from Kansas City (MCI) (as well as STL-PVR) are all running 1x weekly. While these direct flights will be great options for passengers who need to travel on Saturdays, if you need to fly out or return on a different day you’ll have to head the wrong direction to one of Alaska’s West Coast hubs and connect.
Southwest operates daily service on the MCI-CUN route which is also served by Frontier and fellow OneWorld member, and Alaska partner, American Airlines. Alaska is planning to operate this route through June of 2025 so clearly they’re seeing something that I’m not.
If you want to check these flights out for yourself, they’re currently available for booking at AlaskaAir.com.
Summary
Alaska Airlines has announced a slew of new routes this winter connecting a variety of destinations across four countries. Some of these additions appear to be no-brainers while thee are others that puzzle me. It will be interesting to see how these flights perform this winter.
(Photos courtesy Alaska Airlines)
