Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport announced Monday it will resume service to a California market that had been discontinued in the spring.
Alaska Airlines on March 18 will start nonstop service to Ontario, California, from the Santa Rosa facility.
The airline will add the flight that Avelo Airlines canceled in April ahead of it pulling out altogether from the Sonoma County airport (Code: STS).
Alaska will fly to Ontario International Airport with daily round-trip flights using its 76-seat Embraer 175 aircraft, the airline stated.
Airport Manager Jon Stout is glad to have Ontario back in the mix of destinations offered at STS.
“We were happy to have Avelo try it, but they didn’t serve (the market right),” Stout said, adding the airline frequently changed the time of flights and ultimately ended the route within months of launching it. “With Alaska doing it daily, it is a better service to that market, and it will give a lot better options for people who need to go to the Inland Empire.”
Alaska is the biggest commercial airline servicing the Sonoma County airport and for the longest time: 18 years. Its existing nonstop destinations from STS include Los Angeles, Burbank, San Diego, Orange County, Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas and Palm Springs, the latter having launched seasonal service Oct. 26.
In its own Monday announcement, Alaska included the Ontario-STS flight in a broader press release touting 13 new routes and more flight frequencies across its network.
“(We’ve) solidified our role as Santa Rosa-Sonoma’s No. 1 carrier in the heart of California Wine Country,” Kirsten Amrine, vice president of revenue management and network planning, Alaska Airlines, said in the airline’s announcement.
Alaska adding the Ontario route brings back that market to Sonoma County, which the airline saw as a need.
Now, with Southwest approaching Sonoma County on April 7, Alaska is already making competitive moves.
Alaska this month increased its service to Burbank from one to two flights a day, Stout said, and the San Diego flight will be bumped up from one-to-two flights a day, to three starting in March.
Over the past four years, Alaska has made similar competitive moves. It launched flights to Burbank less than two months after Avelo started the route in April 2021. But when Avelo added service to Las Vegas flights in September 2021, Alaska didn’t add Vegas for another three years.
“The difficulty with Vegas is it’s a highly competitive market and there’s a lot of fare competition,” Stout said. “Since it doesn’t get the fares that airlines would like, per se, you can see where Alaska would be a little more patient on that.”
Cheryl Sarfaty covers tourism, hospitality, health care, aviation and employment. Reach her at cheryl.sarfaty@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4259.
Dining and Cooking