The past two years have seen former partners Delta and Alaska Airlines fighting tooth and nail to dominate Seattle’s SeaTac airport, and while it’s hard to tell which airline is winning, the airport and the city certainly are.
While the two airlines are fighting for market share on a variety of routes from Seattle, the airport has been setting monthly and annual passenger records since the war heated up. Passenger counts are increasing more rapidly than at any other U.S. airport, and it has jumped ahead of Newark, Toronto and Orlando in the past year to become North America’s 13th busiest.
Alaska has long been the dominant carrier at Seattle, with part of its business coming from its code-share deals with Delta, now ended as the competition heated up and Delta began developing Seattle as a hub, especially because of its good location for Pacific flights.
In the latest skirmish, Delta is adding new routes to Austin, Eugene, OR, Lihue, HI, Milwaukee, Nashville, Raleigh/Durham and Redmond, OR. Milwaukee, Nashville and Raleigh are all routes that Alaska has added in the past year, and the others all also compete directly with Alaska. Delta is also adding capacity by using larger planes on some routes and adding flights to others.
Delta now has 160 flights a day to 49 destinations from Seattle. Alaska has about 51% of Seattle’s passengers, with nearly 20% for Delta, and rising. Alaska has moves of its own coming, and has gained new routes and connection by buying up Virgin America. The combination makes it the #5 U.S. airline, after the Big 3 and Southwest.
