Alaska Airlines cuts 4 high-profile routes, including 2 transcons

Alaska Airlines is making big changes to its route map.

The Seattle-based carrier filed plans over the weekend to drop four high-profile routes over the next few months, as first seen in Cirium schedules and later confirmed by a carrier spokesperson.

The affected routes include:

• Chicago — San Francisco
• Los Angeles — Nassau, Bahamas
• Washington (Dulles) — Los Angeles
• Washington (Dulles) — San Francisco

All of the domestic routes will end on Aug. 19, while the international route to the Bahamas will stop flying on Aug. 17.

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Travelers booked on these affected routes will be offered full refunds or reaccomodation to nearby airports.

Perhaps the most notable cuts are those to Dulles International Airport (IAD) near Washington, D.C. Exiting these two routes will leave United Airlines with a monopoly on service from IAD to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

This isn’t a station exit for Alaska, as the airline will continue flying from IAD to its hometown of Seattle and San Diego (a route with its own interesting backstory).

Meanwhile, Alaska will continue flying to Los Angeles and San Francisco from the far more convenient Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) in the Washington, D.C. area. The airline offers one daily flight to both destinations.

As for why Alaska is making these cuts at IAD, the airline explains that “we’ve seen a recent decrease in demand on our routes between San Francisco-Washington Dulles (IAD) and Los Angeles-Washington Dulles, potentially connected to economic uncertainty and a decrease in government-related travel.”

Other U.S. airlines have also noticed this trend of reduced demand to and from the nation’s capital in recent weeks, but these are perhaps the most notable cuts yet that have been blamed on this trend.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, Alaska says that it’s once-daily flight doesn’t offer enough frequency to compete with the other airlines in the market — American Airlines and United Airlines — that offer a far more robust schedule of up to 11 daily flights. “Other airlines offer a greater frequency of flights on this route compared to our once-daily flight,” explained a spokesperson. Alaska could’ve decided to compete more fiercely with more flights, but it seemingly decided that redeploying this aircraft makes more sense.

Finally, Alaska’s cut in the Bahamas represents a station exit for the airline. Alaska first entered the market with flights to Nassau from Los Angeles and Seattle in December 2023. At the time, the airline thought it could capture leisure traffic looking for a Caribbean vacation.

But nonstop flights from the West Coast to the Caribbean are historically quite challenging. No other airline flies nonstop from Los Angeles or Seattle to Nassau, and it’s not for lack of trying. In addition to Alaska, JetBlue Airways also tried flying from Los Angeles to Nassau in the 2023 winter season. That flight has since been cut.

“For the past year and a half, we’ve tried a variety of strategies to make the route financially successful from both Seattle and LAX,” an Alaska spokesperson told TPG. It wasn’t immediately clear what strategies Alaska tried on this route, but Seattle service ended earlier this year, and now Los Angeles flights will end later this year.

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