u/PNW-American-Dipper

I was playing a bit more with T-100 Tool and it allows you to run queries and sort all the AS routes by number of departing seats offered.  The chart shows most of the AS routes during February 2026 that had more than 15K offered seats.  The exceptions are Alaska and Hawaii, as the Hawaii inter-island flights have huge numbers on a separate captive fleet.  I did include the flights to ANC and HNL from the other hubs.

The dark bars are routes that involve SEA and the lighter blue are all others.  Note that I started with SEA, then PDX, and then the others.  I did not double count, so once I entered SEA-LAX, I did not again enter LAX-SEA even though the number was slightly different. 

This reflects what we all know:  SEA is critical to AS.  For example, 9/10 (and 13/15) of the busiest routes touch SEA. As you'd expect, many of these are hub-to-hub.

EDIT: For context, a single daily MAX9/900ER flight is about 5K passengers/month. Thus, the floor for this list is approximately 3x/day on that plane. (A single daily E175 is about 2.2K passengers/month.)

Source.

A while back I looked at AS service to Central America, an interesting aspect of the AS network I knew little about.  AS primarily serves the region out of LAX with infrequent flights from SEA and SFO for some destinations. 

At the time, I did not have information about load factors, but now I do and the 2025 data is in the chart above, as is seat information and the underlying data.  The routes seem to do well.  Indeed, SJO and GUA average a load factor of about 90% and LIR and BZE are over 83%, above the AS fleet average. 

Moreover, this modest group of flights is the basis for what I would think is a nice AS advantage, namely the bulk of west coast connections to the key destinations in Central America. A little more adventurous than Mexico and fitting -- in my view -- the Alaska Airlines brand.

The seat numbers look to jump around a bit, but I assume they are correct.  The flights from SEA and SFO look to be 1/week so they do not move the needle much in terms of seats.  (That data is not included but is easily obtainable via the link below.)

As these are not domestic destinations and folks might not immediately recognize the airport codes, here they are:

• SJO – San Jose, Costa Rica
• GUA – Guatemala City, Guatemala
• LIR – Liberia, Costa Rica
• BZE – Belize City, Belize

The usual caveats about load factor apply, of course. It tells us nothing about fares and other critical network factors. By itself, it provides only one measure of a route. That said, it is easier to make money with full planes and harder to make money with empty planes, so it is telling us something. 

Source.

Easy_Money_ posted comment with a site a had been unaware of (T-100 Tool) and it has some additional functionality that allows one to slice the load factor (and other) data in different ways. (It also appears to have loads for international flights.)

By searching just by airline and airport, it will provide a list of all that airline’s flights and they can be organized by load, among other things (sample above). The image is for mainline (i.e., no Horizon or SkyWest) domestic flights during Feb. 2026 that had a load factor of at least 90%. (I excluded Hawaii flights because I think those flights are slightly different but the data is easy to get.)

I looked at the hubs and a few places with routes I thought might have full mainline flights. I may have missed some. I don't think any of this is surprising and there were lots of flights at 89% (this is plainly an arbitrary cutoff). Just eyeballing the data, I would think leading contenders for MAX10 flights would be anything to BOS, JFK, and MCO.

The usual caveats about load factor apply, of course. It tells us nothing about fares and other critical network factors. By itself, it provides only one measure of a route. That said, it is easier to make money with full planes and harder to make money with empty planes so it is telling us something. Of course, this is also just a single winter month.

Source.

I walk to work in Portland and tend to look up on FR24 the planes I hear overhead. Since I mostly walk during one of the AS outbound banks, there can be a lot of flights. Most are expected, but some are interesting. I know airlines do some charters and other one-off flights but this one looks to be headed to Fort Hood in Texas. Anyone know much about the AS charter business?

I has been thinking about looking at the AS summer schedule in Alaska, thinking that there would be a huge and noticeable spike during the summer, as AS adds seasonal routes from places like SFO, DEN, and ORD.

So I looked at the number of seats offered by AS from ANC in 2025. And while there is a summer bump, it pales in comparison to the year-round traffic between SEA and ANC. The magnitude surprised me -- all of the seasonal adds together are little more than a rounding error compared to the usual SEA-ANC numbers.

AS is plainly shifting some traffic to PDX and that will likely continue, but SEA continues to have the vast majority of all AS traffic to the state of Alaska. (AS also flies SEA-JNU, SEA-FAI, and SEA-KTN which only increases the dominance of SEA.)

This is only from ANC and only includes mainline and excludes the HA flights. Those other numbers do not move the needle anyhow.

Note that at the summer peak, DL is running about 25K/mo. seats from SEA to ANC.

Source.

It is a big year so far in aviation news. But it is not a big plane acquisition year for AS as they are waiting on MAX10s to get approved and the 787s are going to come slowly. In SEC filings, AS stated it expected 6 737-8s, 1 787-9, and 4 E175s in 2026.

The most recent acquisition (N838AK) appears to have had its first AS flight recently, and presumably it will be in service fairly soon. This looks to be No. 15 of a planned total of 25 737-8s. My understanding is that AS has orders for 105 737-10s, so the ultimate MAX fleet looks to be approximately 25 737-8s, 80 737-9s, and 105 737-10s.

This significant skew to the largest versions is interesting to me, as it seems to buck common industry strategy -- the MAX8 is the overwhelming best seller of the MAX family and MAX9s are fairly rare. The 737-8s are the only type used at some airports such as SNA and DCA and there seem to me lots of routes where an 8 would be a better sized plane. (They will also be replacing approximately 70 700s and 800s in the coming years.)

But it appears that the costs of the larger planes are close enough that AS thinks the bigger ones make sense regardless of whether they can fill the seats and fleet management is surely easier of the planes are more interchangeable. (Intuitively, even if the cost difference is small, it is not zero, and my impression is that the margins are small enough that small numbers matter.) Note that the Big Three all seem to have large MAX10 orders, though AA and UA also have 100+ MAX8s.

But nobody pays me to manage an airline fleet, and for good reason. Plus, AS has the numbers.

Source.

Part I link looked at GEG generally and this post looks at AS flights specifically.  

I analyzed a single day (4/20/26)  and though it appears fairly representative, there are limits to drawing conclusions from such a small sample size.  Nevertheless, on that day, there were 44 flights (22 arriving and 22 departing) and 7 planes had remained overnight from the previous day.  

As the chart shows, AS flew to SEA (8 flights); PDX (5); BOI (4); LAX (2); and SAN, SFO, and SNA (all 1).  Five of the SEA flights and single flights to SAN and LAX are 737s, but all the others are E175s (see chart).  Thus, in terms of overall passengers, SEA has by far the most.  

The schedule seems solid for a Top 100 airport in the core AS footprint:  good frequency to the two major hubs for connections; flights to other hubs and nominal hubs (SAN, SFO, and LAX); and a flight to a third key southern California airport (SNA).  Given the proximity to the larger hubs of SEA and PDX, one imagines that the California destinations are less for connections, other than perhaps the Mexico and Central America network at LAX.  (Note that AS will also fly GEG-ANC twice-weekly this summer, which is a fun seasonal addition.)  

The frequency of flights to BOI is surprising to me, as BOI does not serve all that many more destinations than GEG for connections and I am not aware of other reasons for so many flights to two regional cities.  (I suspect this is ignorance more than anything else.)  In terms of additions, a flight to LAS seems plausible (WN does it already) and commenters of the first post suggested PAE.

# # #

The day begins early:  At around 5:00 am, two flights departed, one to SEA (737) and one to PDX (E175), presumably to catch the first wave of flights at those hubs.  Between 6:00-6:30 am, two more flights departed, another to SEA (737) and one to BOI (E175).  Between 7:00-7:30 am, flights to SEA, SAN, and LAX (all 737s) departed.  All of these planes had overnighted at GEG.  

I understand BOI has more space available than SEA, so the RONs presumably achieve an airline/network logistics goal in addition to feeding the early SEA flights.  Three of the first five flights out are to SEA and all are 737s that arrive in SEA early in the morning.

Beginning at around 7:45 am, the first arrivals appear from BOI, PDX, SEA, SNA, and SFO, all E175s.  Those planes are turned around and sent back to essentially the same group of airports.  The afternoon slows down, with most hours having just one arrival.  Those planes are also turned around and sent to those same airports.  The overwhelming majority of these flights are E175s.  The details are in the charts above. The SAN departure is in the morning, SFO is mid-day, and SNA is in the afternoon.

Beginning at around 9:30 pm (and ending at 11:59 pm), the planes that will overnight at GEG begin to arrive.  Presumably these flights return GEG-based connecting travelers (and others) home to Spokane.  The bulk of these planes are 737s -- only two of the last seven planes are E175s.  
 
The last chart attempts to depict hour-by-hour arrivals and departures.  Each dot indicates a single flight and the color indicates the type of airframe.  The light shading indicates a RON plane.  

# # #

I also took a quick look at gate usage:  The vast majority of flights use gates C6, C7, and C8 and those gates are fairly active, each having 4-5 turnarounds.  But the early morning departure rush also includes C4, C5, and C9.  These gates are lightly used:  C4 and C5 had only a single arrival and departure each and C9 had two morning departures and one evening arrival.  Indeed, C4 had a single departure at 5:05 am and a single arrival at 10:54 pm, and presumably that plane overnighted at the gate.  C5 was similar.  It did not appear that other airlines use those gates, so it seems like AS has the gate space to grow at GEG.  The gates are noted in the charts.

Again, I have never been to GEG so there are likely some errors and oversights. Plus, as usual, this was done by hand so there might be some minor errors.

I have posted about hubs several times and thought it would make sense to investigate a spoke.  I looked at GEG-Spokane, the second-largest airport in Washington.  I chose GEG because it feeds both SEA and PDX and it turns out that Spokane has a nice suite of statistics posted on its website.  And Spokane the spoke has a nice ring to it.  

Initially, the Spokane metro area has a population of around 600K, and it is growing.  For the aviation crowd, Fairchild Air Force Base is nearby and its 92nd Air Refueling Wing, includes the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker.  The military is also one of the largest employers in the area.  March Madness fans know that Gonzaga University is in Spokane.  Washington State University in Pullman is about a 90 minute drive (though smaller PUW is much closer).

GEG carried more than 4.2M passengers in 2025, making it around the 70th busiest airport in the country.  

AS is the leader at GEG, flying to SEA, PDX, BOI, SFO, LAX, SNA, and SAN (see image).  But mostly it feeds to SEA and PDX, where it is smaller than BOI and ANC, but larger than the other Pacific Northwest airports (e.g., RDM, MFR, EUG, PSC, PUW, etc.).  Thus, GEG is an important airport to AS for maintaining a dominant position in the Pacific Northwest.

AS had about 700K emplanements in 2025 (about 32% of the market) with DL next at a bit less than 600K, and WN third with a bit less than 500K.  UA and AA were less than 200K with LCCs sharing the tiny remainder.  The exact numbers are in the images.  

Other major carriers primarily serve their hubs.  DL to ATL, MSP, LAX, SLC, and SEA; UA to IAH, ORD, SFO, and DEN; AA to DFW, ORD, and PHX; and WN to DAL, SJC, MDW, OAK, SMF, SAN, LAS, PHX, and DEN.  GEG-SEA is by far the most popular route, more than double GEG-DEN.

Right now, AS appears to have the entirety of Concourse C (and it looks lovely), which currently consists of gates C4 to C9.  Concourse C appears to have its own baggage claim and TSA security as well.  (This is based on the online materials, as I have never been there.  Others more familiar with GEG please correct any errors.)

Somewhat uniquely, GEG estimates load factors for all of its airlines and the numbers are above.  The numbers seem high to me, but AS is estimated at 85%, a bit lower than the legacy carriers (86-90%) but above WN (79%).  According to SEC filings, AS averages about a 80-81% overall load factor.  

As the charts make clear, GEG is highly seasonal with a large increase during the summer.  (The passenger count for 2020 literally drops out of the chart and the line for 2021 starts below the chart.  Covid was crazy.)  

Like most airports, GEG is expanding and upgrading.  The program is called Terminal Renovation and Expansion (TREX) and it looks like AS and AA will be the tenants in Concourse C when all is complete.  

Part II will look at AS flights at GEG.

With the upcoming long-haul flights to Europe, I thought it might be interesting to put all the AS international flights from SEA on a map. So that's what I did -- it is rather remarkable compared to before the HA acquisition. The lines across the Atlantic and Pacific really make a difference.

Just looking at the map, it is surprising to me that Mexico City and Quebec City do not have service, as can be served with 737s. I assume they simply do not pencil out and I know MEX has been tried before.

It seems like Sydney is next and I would think Paris when they get enough 787s.

I did not dig into whether some of the flights south are seasonal and I may have missed some to Canada and Mexico, but this gives a general sense of international network from SEA.

Link.

If so, I'm curious what it was like.

Link.