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Seattle's Paine Field looking up again

 

Seattle's second airport, with barely a year under its belt when the pandemic struck, nearly flatlined, but its day may be coming back.

The field, north of the city at Everett, started operations in March, 2019 with Alaska, American and United scheduling regional flights, hoping to grow on demand from communities that otherwise faced a long trip through Seattle to mainline SeaTac. Paine Field is also used by Boeing as a delivery point for its twin-aisle plane factory next door.

United dropped the last of its flights half a year ago, and Alaska had scaled back operations. But, as of next month, Alaska and its affiliate Horizon will be back to 18 flights a day, the pre-pandemic level, and have plans for more.

Alaska's network vice-president, Brett Catlin, points out that aside from growing demand at Everett, which sees Alaska's flights consistently filling, SeaTac is approaching its 400-operation-a-day limit and will run out of terminal capacity as well. “When Sea-Tac is tapped out — and we expect that to happen in 2025 — then Paine Field becomes our place to grow,” Catlin said.

The best part of every trip is realizing that it has upset your expectations

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