Alaska Airlines has announced it will add a nonstop route from Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport to Seattle beginning July 1, 2015. This is the airline’s first Milwaukee route.
Through a partnership with SkyWest Airlines, Alaska will add the route plus Seattle-Oklahoma City and Portland, Ore.-St. Louis routes on seven new Embraer E175 jets. The first three aircraft will be operational this summer, and the other four will go into service in the first quarter of 2016.
The Milwaukee-Seattle route will be offered once from each city per day, and introductory one-way fares will start at $119 for tickets purchased by Dec. 1 and travel completed between July 8 and Sept. 30, 2015.
Southwest Airlines also offers a Milwaukee-Seattle nonstop flight.
“The E175 is new for the Alaska brand and fills a specific need to serve ‘long, thin routes’ – destinations that are too distant for our regional aircraft, but currently don’t have enough customer demand to fill a mainline jet,” said Andrew Harrison, senior vice president of planning and revenue management for Alaska Airlines. “The smaller, but spacious, E175 jet will not only open up new cities, but provide feed traffic to our Northwest hubs, while giving customers a comfortable experience on these longer flights.”
Today’s announcement continues a series of new routes for Mitchell International announced earlier this year. In September, Frontier Airlines announced new flights to Ft. Myers and Orlando, and this winter, Southwest, Delta, Frontier and AeroMexico will operate flights from Milwaukee to six destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean. Many of those flights are available through Funjet Vacations, a national travel firm headquartered in Milwaukee County. Earlier this month, Southwest Airlines announced a new nonstop flight from Milwaukee to San Diego beginning in 2015.
