Over the last two years, several airlines have put their resources toward flying to the Last Frontier.
While Alaska is home to just under 750,000 residents, tourists worldwide come to see everything from fjords and dense forests to the snow-capped peaks of North America’s tallest mountain, Denali. Due to the state’s vastness and the separation of its territory from the mainland U.S., Alaskans also travel by air more frequently than people who live in other parts of the country.
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As one airline cuts Alaska service, another adds it
“Alaskans like to get out,” Alaska Airlines (ALK)  said in a statement when, at the end of 2023, it announced new routes between Anchorage and California and a new JFK- Anchorage flight that is currently North America’s longest. “Sometimes that might mean hitting all the must-sees in New York City or taking surf lessons in SoCal.”
While a mainstream airline will never have as many flights as one whose brand is based around a given destination, Delta Air Lines (DAL)  has also been eying Alaska for expansion plans. The first major push came when the Atlanta-based airline first built out its Seattle hub with 30 flights to Alaska in 2014. Recent changes include switching to larger planes for its flights to Anchorage from Atlanta and Detroit and bringing back a retired flight between Salt Lake City and Fairbanks for the summer of 2025.
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As first reported by the AirlineGeeks aviation watchdog, not all of Delta’s Alaska service has proven profitable, and the airline has recently removed Sitka and Ketchikan from its booking platforms. The two port cities are very popular stops for the over 1.7 million visitors who came to the state on a cruise line last year but see significantly less traffic from those flying in.
Seasonal flights to two Alaska port towns will not resume in June
Delta was previously slated to run flights to the two cities from Seattle during the warmer months from June to October.
“The seasonal service to both cities from Seattle was supposed to resume in June 2025, with it continuing until September,” Joey Gerardi of AirlineGeeks writes. “Delta flights to Sitka and Ketchikan originally started on the SkyWest CRJ-700s (SKYW)  when they began in 2015, and then eventually switched to the Embraer E175 (ERJ)  still being operated by the regional airline.”
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This means that Alaska Airlines is now the only mainstream carrier serving the regional airports in Sitka and Ketchikan. This week, the Seattle-based carrier also announced that it will launch a new daily flight to Fairbanks from Portland International Airport in May 2025 and new once-a-week routes to Anchorage from Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) and Sacramento International (SMF) airports.
The new routes come as Alaska moves forward with its merger with Hawaiian Airlines. By acquiring another airline that serves a non-mainland part of the U.S., Alaska aims to create a wider network of cities to which it does not fly while still keeping it running under the Hawaiian brand that many passengers expect to see when flying to the tropics.
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