Northwest regional airline Horizon Air will eliminate all flights to North Bend-Coos Bay and Klamath Falls in Oregon beginning Oct. 11 in a move to trim unprofitable flying from its schedule.
“Despite our best efforts to adjust flight schedules and fares in order to make these routes financially viable, consistent profitability has proved to be elusive,” said Dan Russo, Horizon’s vice president of marketing and communications. “The astronomically high fuel prices have only made the situation worse, and so we find ourselves with no choice but to reduce our losses by taking this action.”
The end of Horizon Air service won’t leave the two airports without a carrier. SkyWest, flying as United Express, serves both airports with daily flights to San Francisco.
The diminishment of air service, however, is expected to be particularly difficult for the two relatively isolated cities that depend on tourism for much of their business activity. North Bend is the gateway to the southwest Oregon cost and to the internationally famed Bandon Dunes link-style golf courses at Bandon. Klamath Falls is the close to Crater Lake National Park.
The airline will also trim its Seattle-Portland schedule from the present 31 flights daily to 24 by Oct. 26 as it retires its 37-seat Bombardier Q200 turboprop aircraft from its schedule earlier than anticipated, the airline announced today.
The dozen Q200s will be retired by Oct. 28 instead of by April 2009, the original target for their retirement, the airline said.
The airline will also begin removing CRJ-700 jets from its fleet in September as it moves to a fleet of all 74-passenger Bombardier Q400 turboprops.
The airline is moving to the Q400, of which it now has 34 because the aircraft is the most fuel efficient in its fleet. Standardizing on a single type of plane will also help Horizon trim maintenance and staffing costs give it more scheduling flexibility.
Horizon is attempting to cut its fuel consumption and eliminate unprofitable routes as it tries to cope with ever-higher fuel costs. For the airline industry as a whole, fuel costs have risen more than 75 percent this year.
SeaTac-based Horizon announced numerous other schedule changes in a press release:
Medford-Portland: The current five daily flights (two Q400s and three Q200s) will be reduced to four (two Q400s and two Q200s) from Aug. 25 through Sept. 6 and then become two Q400s and two CRJ-700s starting Sept. 7, increasing seats by 11 percent compared to today.
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