Just saw this, and seems pretty consistent with a lot of other complaints.
It's strange why Alaska can't seem to figure out its catering for longhaul.
This guy isn't my favorite reviewer, but it seems like given the United and Alaska hard product are basically the same Alaska did a better job with the service according to him.
Get $250 off the price of one hub to hub flight!
While the article doesn't explicitly confirm the route, Delta has said it will not be LAX to SIN, leaving SEA highly likely:
>While no route has been formally announced, my money's on nonstop service from Delta's Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) hub; Esposito ruled out nonstop Singapore service from its other West Coast hub in Los Angeles.
This would match what a lot of the leaked internal memos have been discussing. Delta recently added in a SEA to NRT route to counter Alaska's expansion as well, so clearly they are not done with SEA just yet.
I'm not an expert on aircraft and flight patterns, so this is just roughly what I know based on the current ranges and situation.
Alaska has 787-9s, but with the Russian airspace restrictions, a SEA to SIN would still likely be heavily payload restricted, so seats would need to be blocked off, making the flight cost more, but yield less. In contrast, Delta has A350-900s that can more comfortably run the route (it's what SQ uses on this route for SQ 27/28). Delta's A350s are slightly more dense than SQ's, but the A350 is a very capable aircraft.
We know that United was previously struggling on LAX-SIN with their 787-9s (before the premium elevated configuration), and ended up dropping the route. LAX to SIN is about 600 more nautical miles than SEA to SIN, but United already had a significantly less dense, more premium configuration than Alaska's 787-9s. United's non-Elevated 787s are 48J/21W/188Y vs Alaska's standard 34J/266Y, a 43 seat difference. So to me that suggests Alaska's current configuration wouldn't be able to make this work either.
Premium economy is coming at some point for Alaska, which seems like a necessary step to make this route work. Both to reduce the weight, but also for the higher premium yields needed for a ultra longhaul route like this.
Regardless, Alaska is doing well on the Pacific side, less so to Europe/Atlantic so far, it would be encouraging for Alaska to shift focus on more Asia to match Delta's expansion.
This was quite the challenging data set to work through given that UA has split traffic across NRT and HND, along with the ANA joint venture. I also split out the GUM and HNL data as a bonus at the end, as that's a completely different market, almost point to point. I've done a much simpler analysis for Delta linked here.
Even with UA's DEN being the highest, you see very consistent performance across all the hubs for United in the 80s, as the ANA joint venture allows for strong partner connections on both sides to fill up the seats. IAD does seem to be a laggard. This makes sense as IAD is one of UA's smallest hubs, it has massively split domestic traffic between DCA and BWI.
You see a similar story with ANA, with very evenly distributed across the hubs, and SEA as the weak link, as that's not a United hub at all.
Next, if you look at load factors only, you miss the forest for the trees since the loads do look quite similar. LAX to TYO remains the biggest market by a wide margin with 20% more passengers carried than SFO. Expect ORD to increase to match NYC, once the new ORD to NRT flight takes off.
Passenger counts actually vary significantly between UA and ANA due to the significantly more dense aircraft that UA uses. ANA has larger seats in economy and has a First Class cabin that takes up much of their real estate on their 777s.
For example, an ANA 777-300ER with The Room has 8 F/64 J/24 W/116 Y for 212 seats. A United 777-300ER will have 60 J/24 W/266 Y for 350 seats. That's a huge 138 seat difference, meaning assuming both planes are 100% filled, United has capacity for 65% more passengers.
As a result, routes where UA and ANA have the same # of frequencies like SFO, NYC, IAH, and IAD, United carries significantly more passengers.
Interestingly, you see NRT load factors slightly edge out HND, which makes a lot of sense as NRT handles a lot more connecting traffic, often times, people do not transit via HND, aside from domestic flights. Secondly, NRT fares tend to lag HND fares a little bit, so lower yielding passengers may opt for NRT given the two options to save on money. And fwiw, I'd add that given the excellent rail infrastructure, HND/NRT difference is actually vastly overstated in terms of passenger convenience.
On the flip side, you see by total passenger count, ANA at HND handles vastly more passengers than NRT. Especially as most ANA routes are flown from HND, for example, ANA doubles up on LAX and JFK to HND, and only does HND from SEA, IAD, and IAH as well.
Honolulu is really in its own league, ANA carries more passengers between HNL and TYO than UA/NH do on SFO to TYO combined. HNL to NRT alone has double daily A380 whales on this flight.
GUM itself is also a large market between 2x to 4x GUM to NRT flights a day and 1x GUM to HND, with 371k passengers carried, they are significantly larger than IAH to TYO. Performance is weaker in the high 70s for loads, but a necessary link for connectivity, and UA often makes up for it in insanely high captive hub yields.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments about the data and what it means.
I'm all for the 2-line, and currently the most practical stop I see if Redmond Technology station for all the Microsoft workers. That is great already, that helps reduce hundreds to thousands of cars a day going across the bridge.
But beyond that, half the stations dump you into a very hostile intersection for pedestrians, parking lots, or some random area that's not connected very well.
Like Bellevue "Downtown" is hardly downtown, you get dropped off at a 4 lane intersection that is one block away from a major highway, which is highly unpleasant.
Obviously, this isn't a complaint about Sound Transit, but the Eastside seriously needs to densify and urbanize for the 2-line to take off on their side, I sense that most riders are still Seattle-sids originating passengers. The stations are still too car-centric.
This is pretty aggressive honestly speaking.
SEA to HND performs well for Delta, but not sure if NRT will hold up without partner connections.
Rumored to be CDG
It was previously reported that Delta's new ATL to RUH flight had barely sold any seats
Delta's benchmark for flights this far out is 50 to 60% sold, but there were delusional people thinking that this was normal for whatever reason.
Regardless, Delta clearly sees the extremely low bookings and has responded by running a hot sale of 19k miles or 38k roundtrip.
And yes, Delta One is still going for half a million miles.
I must say I'm both shocked and not shocked. 41% is about a $180 increase.
When you adjust for stage length, SEA to SFO is much more expensive per mile than everything on this list. JFK and EWR are over 3x as long, but only marginally pricier. Even with the fuel price increases, this has far outpaced all the other corporate routes.
That being said Seattle and SF are basically the two highest per capita GDP metros in the US, a ton of people and business travelers are quite well off. All the airlines must be maxing out the fares because of that.
Genuinely did not know this was an option for airports without Sky Clubs. I knew you could get into the Amex Centurion lounges, but not Escape lounges. I never hear anyone talking about this.
Apparently this has been around for a while too.
Aside from the full lieflats, these were basically the best domestic First Class seats, super deep recline, spacious legroom, great padding. And a big reason why Virgin America could be support all these transcon routes.
Alaska got rid of them so they could standardize their fleets, but in the process, they ended up spending millions for an inferior product.
Alaska really struggles on transcon routes, even out of SEA. If you look at SEA to JFK, Delta consistently gets hundreds even thousands of dollars more per First Class seat. SEA to BOS and even PDX to JFK is the same situation.
For non-chain hotels without loyalty programs, the math for Bilt travel portal just doesn't work out.
Apples to apples, I'm not sure why anyone would use the Bilt portal as 3x to 4x is incredibly weak. Bilt ought to make it at least 5x to be competitive with other cards.
I have to say this is a pretty pathetic response from Alaska. Through and through they mishandled the situation, and claimed they didn't break any policies or do anything wrong. But they're pretending like they're being charitable in giving some partial refunds.
And it's also really weird that this blog is claiming Alaska did a good job responding in this situation.
Overall, this is pretty bad PR, and shows no real accountability from Alaska.
Relevant bc of the joint venture, so a lot of Lufthansa tickets being sold via United.
Normally, I'd have taken United over Lufthansa because of the better hard product, but now this gives more options.
Given the Middle East situation, I doubt this route will actually fly at this rate.
Delta was given massive subsidies to fly this route, but literal empty planes don't work for the profit margins.
I remember people squawking about the power of the ATL connecting hub, but that fundamentally doesn't matter since people aren't clamoring to go to Riyadh and it doesn't make sense to double connect in ATL and RUH to go to where you want.
It's a rough departure time though for the return flight.
https://onemileatatime.com/news/delta-los-angeles-manila-flights/
ANZ has a good soft product but those herringbone seats were so bad, so I was always flying United on flights to New Zealand.