Delta Air Lines wants to almost triple its number of gates at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport as it challenges market leader Alaska Airlines and establishes the airport as a West Coast hub for flights to Asia.
“We’re making good progress on our discussion to upgrade the facility and to turn Seattle into a huge international gateway for Delta,” Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson said on a recorded message to employees.
Delta, the world’s third-largest airline, is seeking 30 gates at Sea-Tac in the long term, Anderson said on the Nov. 13 call. The airline now has 11 gates, according to the airport, which is the base for Seattle-based Alaska.
Delta has been pushing into Alaska’s turf for more than a year as the two fight for market share at an airport where the smaller airline now controls about 40 percent of the traffic. Atlanta-based Delta has designated Seattle as a hub from which to offer an increasing number of trans-Pacific flights.
Anderson’s message suggests Delta is pushing beyond a previously stated goal. In September, Seattle airport spokesman Perry Cooper said Delta wanted about 150 flights a day at the airport by 2017. That would require 19 or 20 gates, assuming eight flights a day from each one, Cooper said.
Delta could potentially operate 240 flights a day with 30 Seattle gates, Cooper said. Sea-Tac, as the airport is commonly known, determines how many gates to grant airlines each year according to formula using their number of outbound seats as of August, Cooper said.
“That’s one of the estimated opportunities there,” Cooper said by telephone. “But does that mean that somebody would use that many?”
Delta didn’t return a call yesterday seeking comment about Anderson’s remarks on the employee call.
At 30 gates, Delta’s Seattle operation would still be smaller than United Airlines’ hub in San Francisco, which often is seen as the dominant hub to Asia because of that market’s large Asian population. United operates from 32 domestic gates at San Francisco International Airport and shares 12 international gates with partner airlines in the Star Alliance, said Megan McCarthy, a United spokeswoman.
Delta’s biggest West Coast base is now Los Angeles, where the airline handled about 6.89 million passengers in the year ended in July, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The airline’s Seattle total was 3.37 million people.
Delta has been boosting domestic flights to and from Seattle to build connecting traffic, which then could fly to Asia. President Ed Bastian told analysts in a third-quarter earnings call last month that Delta’s decision to cut seats from Cincinnati and Memphis, Tennessee, while expanding in Seattle is producing solid results.
“Seattle’s domestic performance has significantly exceeded our expectations as unit revenues increased 6 percent on a 25 percent increase in capacity,” Bastian said.
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