Delta scales back amid 'poor' demand in Alaska capital

Delta Air Lines will discontinue year-round service to Juneau on Aug. 31, switching to a seasonal schedule for its flights between Seattle and Alaska’s capital city.

Delta apparently did not gain enough traction in that market against Alaska Airlines, which has long been Juneau’s sole major carrier and a rival that Delta is increasingly sparring with in Seattle.

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Delta first launched summer-only service to Juneau in 2014, going head-to-head with Alaska Airlines' year-round service. The Juneau Empire newspaper says Delta's arrival marked “the first time in nearly 20 years that Alaska Airlines didn’t have a monopoly on the market.”

Delta returned in the summer of 2015, sparking a fare war that sent prices plummeting – both to Seattle and to connecting destinations.

New Delta routes to escalate turf war with Alaska Air?

Delta subsequently upgraded its Juneau-Seattle route to year-round service. But the Empire says Delta failed to make inroads with local customers and “quietly made the decision to cease year-round service at the end of last month.”

“Our plan will be to bring it back into service spring 2017 as a seasonal destination,” Mike Medeiros, Delta’s Vice President – Seattle, says to the Empire.

The switch comes amid a turf battle between Delta and Alaska Airlines over Seattle. Alaska Airlines has long operated a hub in its hometown of Seattle. It also enjoyed a close-but-now-fraying partnership with Delta in which the airlines sell connecting seats on many of each other’s flights.

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That allowed Alaska Air to funnel domestic passengers via its Seattle hub to Delta’s international departures from Seattle to points in Asia and Europe. But Delta has moved during the past few years to build up its own hub in Seattle. It now competes head-to-head against Alaska on nearly all of Seattle’s most-lucrative routes.

That includes several routes to Alaska, Alaska Air’s namesake market and one of its most important.

As for Juneau, Delta apparently couldn’t shake local fliers’ longstanding ties with Alaska Air.

Medeiros tells the Empire ticket sales were solid in Seattle for its Seattle-Juneau flights. But that's not been the case for demand from Juneau.

“Candidly, it’s been poor. And yet we know that folks are traveling. It takes really both points of sale for a market to be successful," Medeiros says to Juneau’s KTOO radio.

Medeiros adds that while Juneau travelers may have been “appreciative of lower fares … local residents haven’t really supported Delta in a way that we really need them to continue the service.”

As for Alaska Air, Medeiros appeared to acknowledge the carrier's clout in the state. "There’s an extreme loyalty factor in the state of Alaska because that’s all they had,” he says to KTOO.

Scott McMurren, an Alaska travel expert who writes Alaska Travelgram, predicts to the Empire that fares will rise during the winter but added that competitive pressures will help pressure fares down in the summer.

The Empire also noted that Delta appeared to run into some operational issues with Juneau's winter weather.

"I think the Juneau travelers, at least those that originate in Juneau, are used to a well-oiled machine and Delta still had some work to do and I don’t think they were willing to stick around that long," McMurren tells the Empire:

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