EVERETT — Alaska Airlines is shuffling its flight schedule at Paine Field ahead of the spring and summer travel season, and Spokane and Boise are out as a result.
Daily departures to Spokane and Boise from the Everett airport have been discontinued, with no plans to resume, Alaska Airlines spokesperson Ray Lane said.
Flights to those cities rarely left the gate full. Both routes had “consistently low load factors from Paine Field,” Lane said of the airline’s decision to nix them.
More seasonal revisions are planned. A daily round trip to Palm Springs ends in mid April but is scheduled to resume Sept. 6, Lane said.
Service to Tucson will return Oct. 5.
As of Thursday, March 16, Alaska will serve seven destinations and operate 14 daily flights from the Snohomish County-owned airport. The seven destinations are Anchorage, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Orange County and Palm Springs.
Daily round trip service to Los Angeles is scheduled to resume April 18.
Alaska will continue to operate four or five flights a day to San Francisco through the fall, one of Alaska’s primary hubs, Lane said.
The airline began offering a daily flight to Anchorage last fall.
Alaska Airlines and sibling regional carrier Horizon Air are the sole airline tenants serving Paine Field. United Airlines ended service at the Everett terminal in October 2021.
When commercial airline service launched from the Everett airfield in March 2019, Alaska operated 18 daily flights.
Propeller Airports, a privately owned firm, built and operates the four-year old passenger terminal in a public-private partnership with Snohomish County. The three-gate terminal has two jet bridges and a third gate for passengers to board from the pavement.
“We are encouraged by the full flights that have been leaving the terminal and look forward to additional Alaska flights and a new carrier entrant as we continue to build back from the pandemic,” said Brett Smith, Propeller CEO.
Air travel has rebounded since the pandemic emptied airport terminals three years ago and idled more than 90% of the nation’s passenger fleet.
On Thursday, more than 2.4 million passengers passed through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints nationwide, compared to 2.5 million the same day in 2019.
Janice Podsada: 425-339-3097; jpodsada@heraldnet.com;
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