Question for SEA/PDX Skywest pilots

[wxman13]

Thanks in advance for anyone who can help answer my questions. There has been talk that Horizon may pull out of Walla Walla in the coming year, since their passenger loadings have been dropping. They have already cut one of their daily flights. If they leave, I have heard some rumors that Skywest ::might:: consider coming back to ALW. More specifically, I've heard that some Skywest pilots had been given ALW plates a little while back and that management is watching how things unfold here--is this true? Have any plans (however vague and general) been discussed for future routes?

Thanks,
Peter

 

[AirSeattle]

Nothing on the radar that I've heard about as far as ALW is concerned. The EMB gang may have plates, but only as an alternate. (it does get dark under this mushroom, however!)

fly safe!

joel

 

[everyonedoa360]

Skywest does not do ANYTHING unless we are told to do it by DL or UAL. Horizon could close it's doors and you won't see any EMB's unless we were told to go there.

 

[Q200_FO]

Didn;t know that....

First I've heard of it. Where did you hear that we may be pulling out of ALW?

 

[Morning Wood]

Skywest has never flown to ALW. It's used as an alternate
only.

MW

 

[wxman13]

Thanks to everyone for the replies so far--it has helped clarify a number of things. As far as the possibility of Horizon pulling out, this is pretty well known among pilots here (myself included). When Horizon cut back to 3 daily flights from 4 about a month ago, they made no bones about the fact that if they couldn't recoup passenger load levels to above 65% per flight, that they may have no choice but to pull out, since it simply isn't profitable if the aircraft aren't filled that much. What I'm hearing right now is that all sides want Horizon to stay, so a lot is being done to promote flying through ALW, particularly on the part of the Port. My sources for this are the Union-Bulletin, our daily paper up here, and the Port of Walla Walla.

Peter

 

[Q200_FO]

Personally, I don't think we're leaving anytime soon. Or else ALW would be without air service period. We are the only game in town you know. We cut that one flight becasue of the end of the summer season mainly.

 

[seatrumpeter]

PDX Skywest flying

If only we knew what will happen with PDX/SEA flying. A couple of years ago Skywest did about four times the amount of flying out of SEA as today. In addition to YVR, PSC, GEG and PDX, we did BLI, BOI, EUG, MFR, YKM, YYJ. As everyonedoa360 points out, we fly where UAL says we fly and UAL is interested in feed traffic, not point to point so there would have to be enough traffic in ALW interested in connecting to UAL mainline before a route was put in place (and that doesn't seem likely, does it?). So in summary, it doesn't make much difference what QX does if the feed traffic is not there for United.


We recently started doing a USAir codeshares out of SEA to GEG and PDX (same flights as UAL but with USAir flight numbers also). Anecdotally, it seems like loads are up with RDM, GEG and YVR being especially busy. All the PDX crewmembers would like to see even a little extra PDX flying. A couple of months ago, BLI was being floated as a possibility (apparently a lot of UAL 1K pax there, but nothing has materialized (we have that chart in our binders also).

In addition, Mesa is now flying RJs to PDX from DEN and LAX, ground handling by Skywest. We've been told that this will be Skywest airplanes once we get the CRJ700s as we can do the ground handling at both ends. RJs in SEA might also be in our future but this is just personal speculation.

Seatrumpeter