Horizon has announced new San Jose-Sacramento service. Umm, yeah, I’ll buy a ticket on that route. (Though sometimes an extra easy segment can come in handy.)
Cranky Flier explains what’s going on:
Billings to Helena? San Jose to Sacramento? Yeah, that’s just odd. Basically they’re creating round-robin trips where you fly from point A to point B to point C and then back to point A. These have never really worked well for airlines in the past, so I’m not sure what makes them think this will be a winner this time.
Shorter routes tend to have a higher ratio of revenue to fuel cost. This is an extreme case, but I’m sure that operators of smaller aircraft are struggling to find routes on which the revenue has a chance to meet costs.
And at the same time Horizon just announced it’s discontinuing other NW regional routes, such as SEA to Butte and SEA to Portland. More info here:
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/477/story/424784.html
If Horizon’s SJC-SMF is weird, what does that make ExpressJet’s Santa Barbara – Sacramento?
At least you get some free regional beer or wine on the Horizon flight!