SFO gets new nonstop flight to Europe’s biggest tourist hotspot

Bay Area residents will get a new option for nonstop flights to one of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations next year when United Airlines introduces service between San Francisco International and Barcelona, Spain. The airline will begin daily flights to Barcelona on May 23, using a 314-passenger 777-200ER wide-body. The new United service will provide the only nonstop competition for Level, a Barcelona-based, low-cost airline owned by International Airlines Group, the parent of Iberia and British Airways. Level will operate four flights a week from SFO starting in late March. If you go, be prepared for crowds. Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million, hosted more than 12 million visitors last year. Barcelona residents are so upset about tourist overcrowding that the city has taken steps in recent years to control the torrent of visitors, like requiring licenses for Airbnb owners, limiting the size of guided tour groups, capping the number of new hotel rooms in the city center and imposing a new tax on cruise passengers.

Announcing an airline merger is the easy part, as Alaska Airlines Group demonstrated last weekend when it said it will acquire Hawaiian Airlines. But the hard part is winning regulatory approval. Now that Alaska has made its $1.9 billion purchase plan official, all eyes will be on the Justice Department’s antitrust lawyers to see if it files suit to block the deal — as it did not only with JetBlue’s acquisition of Spirit Airlines, but also with the JetBlue-American Airlines Northeast Alliance, which wasn’t even a merger. (DOJ won a federal court ruling that put an end to the latter deal, and it is awaiting an imminent decision on the former.) It’s obvious that the Biden Administration is not keen on seeing more consolidation in the airline industry, but if DOJ does challenge the Alaska-Hawaiian deal, it would have to prove to a judge’s satisfaction that the combination would harm consumers by resulting in higher fares and/or reduced service options.

A key factor in any such debate is the amount of market share that the merging companies would control before and after the acquisition. For Alaska and Hawaiian, that might not be a problem for their combined overall networks, but it could be when it comes to their routes between the mainland and Hawaii. There are plenty of players in that market, which also includes United, Delta, American and Southwest. According to a market analysis this week by Aviation Week, United is currently the market leader, with 23.5% of the total seat capacity between the mainland and the islands. But Hawaiian is a close second at 23.2%, and Alaska ranks third with a 16.9% market share. 

Would regulators see a problem if a combined Alaska/Hawaiian suddenly controlled more than 40% of the capacity in the market? There’s a good chance they might, and their concerns could be most intensely focused on the two carriers’ routes between the West Coast and Hawaii, some of which overlap. Aviation Week notes that Hawaiian has 28 routes linking the islands with the mainland, and Alaska operates on 12 of them, “equating to an overlap of 43% of Hawaiian’s Hawaii-mainland U.S. network … Meanwhile, Alaska’s Hawaii-mainland U.S. network spans 24 routes, meaning Hawaiian currently serves half of them.” The 12 overlapping routes include service to Honolulu and Maui from San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle and Portland, Ore.

For what it’s worth, Alaska said the combined airline will maintain Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines as separate brands “while integrating into a single operating platform,” with service offered at “price points to make air travel accessible to a wide range of consumers across a range of cabin classes.” (After Alaska bought Virgin American Airlines for $2.6 billion in 2016, it continued to maintain that airline as a separate brand — until 2018.) Alaska said Hawaiian’s customer loyalty program would be absorbed into Alaska’s Mileage Plan, “including the ability to earn and redeem miles on 29 global partners and receive elite benefits on the full complement of oneworld Alliance airlines, expanded global lounge access and benefits of the combined program’s co-brand credit card.” It added that Honolulu would become “a key Alaska Airlines hub,” offering “international connectivity for West Coast travelers throughout the Asia-Pacific region.”

Meanwhile, a decision is expected soon on the JetBlue-Spirit merger. A federal trial in Boston on the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to block the deal ended this week and now both sides are awaiting the judge’s ruling. JetBlue has argued that combining the two carriers will create a new, larger company better suited to compete effectively against the nation’s four biggest airlines: American, United, Delta and Southwest. DOJ’s antitrust lawyers claim that folding Spirit into JetBlue will cause fares to rise in the affected markets and will mean the elimination of one of the country’s largest ultralow-cost airlines, putting a damper on competition. The court’s decision is expected before the end of the month.

In August, a New York Times investigation of the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control operation determined that airline close calls “happen far more often than previously known.” In a follow-up article this week, the NYT examined the impact of the FAA’s admitted controller shortage on its current workforce, under the headline “Drunk and asleep on the job: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink.” Those were a couple of the more serious problems that the newspaper found when its reporters pored over hundreds of complaints that controllers submitted to an FAA hotline “describing issues like dangerous staffing shortages, mental health problems and deteriorating buildings, some infested by bugs and black mold,” the newspaper said. 

Those complaints also included “at least seven reports of controllers sleeping when they were on duty and five about employees working while under the influence of alcohol or drugs,” the NYT said. It also interviewed dozens of current and former controllers for the article and found that many of them are working “six-day weeks and 10-hour days,” creating a “fatigued, distracted and demoralized work force that is increasingly prone to making mistakes.” In response, the FAA said on its X account (formerly Twitter) that the behavior cited in the Times story “is unacceptable and has already been addressed,” and that the story “does not reflect the high level of safety of our nation’s airspace. Flying has never been safer, due in large part to our air traffic controllers. We encourage them to report safety concerns & incidents without fear of reprisal.”

Hawaiian Airlines service from Oakland International to Lihue, Kauai, which has been suspended since early September, is set to resume on Dec. 14 with one daily A321neo flight. Alaska Airlines is due to add a few California routes on Dec. 14, including San Luis Obispo to Las Vegas, Palm Springs to New York JFK, and Orange County to Bozeman, Montana, and Tucson, Arizona. Meanwhile, Alaska and American Airlines — partners in the Oneworld alliance — are greatly expanding their domestic code-sharing program. According to AeroRoutes, American will gradually attach its AA code to Alaska flights on 29 routes, including San Francisco to Burbank, Jackson Hole, Orange County, Orlando, Palm Springs, Redmond, and San Diego; San Jose to Honolulu, Kahului, Lihue and Kona, Hawaii; and San Diego to Santa Rosa, San Luis Obispo, San Jose, Sacramento, Monterey and Fresno. And Alaska will put its code onto scores of AA flights out of that airline’s hubs in Phoenix, Philadelphia and Washington Reagan National.  

American Airlines is promising a big upgrade to its regional aircraft fleet next year when it will start installing high-speed, satellite-based Wi-Fi on 500 smaller, two-class jets — the same kind of connectivity it currently has on all 900 of its mainline planes. (Delta recently announced a similar enhancement for 400 regional aircraft in its Delta Connection fleet, also starting in 2024.) American will use technology developed by Intelsat, the same company that serves its mainline fleet; the regional jet upgrades are expected to take two years to complete and will give passengers on the smaller planes the same Wi-Fi speed available on mainline planes. “With the planned purchase of this new technology, American is reinforcing its commitment to provide a consistent and connected experience for customers on all of American’s connectivity-equipped flights with the ability to stream, browse, check email and even log onto VPN while inflight,” the airline said. The upgrade will include AA’s Embraer 175s, Bombardier CR7s and CR9s but not 50-seat Embraer 145s.