Construction workers at Norman Y Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC/KSJC) have been hard at work in building the new gates at the airport. They have initially announced their plans months back and you can see from the thread below. What was thought to be 4 gates turned out to be 6 gates!!!
Officials are preparing for a grand opening of these gates, 31-36, sometime next month.
@Kilt_McHaggis and the IFAET, you guys better get to work on adding those gates to SJC in IF XD :D
Who are these gates going to?
Many sources say that Southwest will receive these 6 gates as they are the largest carrier at SJC with over 100 daily flights to 30 nonstop destinations (32 starting on June 9). The larger amount of gates will allow them to expand further and create fewer delays. As Southwest operations shift to the south, some gates of Southwest today will be handed over to Alaska, the second largest carrier at SJC with 20 nonstop destinations. There is also a chance that Delta could be receiving more gates as they are the third largest carrier at San Jose with 8 nonstop destinations.
What do I think of this?
I think that this expansion will allow SJC to better handle the soaring number of passenger traffic at SJC. We recently reached a new record of 14.2 million passengers back in 2018, the highest the airport has ever had. That number is expected to increase this year and even more next year. The new gates will allow for SJC to keep its low delay and cancellation rates while also allowing for airlines to expand more at the airport. I can’t wait to see how SJC will flourish in the next few months! :D
While I’m sure it would be great, I don’t think they are or will be planning to start this service in the nearby future.
Southwest anyways doesn’t have very many destinations to the East Coast from San Jose, so it’d be quite unlikely to see this service.
It’s kind of similar with the Washington National route @baseball_inferno. Southwest flies from San Jose to Baltimore already, and while they could definitely start service to Washington National, it’d be unlikely since San Francisco has United and Alaska Airlines already serving that route.
Then, there is Dulles, a large United hub. United already flies San Francisco to Dulles with a variety of aircraft, such as the 788, 772, 738/9, and the 752/3. From Oakland, Southwest also serves Baltimore. With all of these airlines flying from the 3 major Bay Area airports to the 3 major Washington D.C. airports, it’s unlikely Southwest will start San Jose to Washington National soon…
But then when you look at the fact that Alaska has SJC-JFK even though it already has SFO-JFK and that it has SJC-DAL/AUS when it already has SFO-DAL/AUS, I don’t see it as an unlikely factor that SJC-DCA will be a thing
Regarding Oakland, Alaska is very unlikely to expand there as it is a low cost airport and it wouldn’t make sense to expand big there
Right now, Alaska is competing hard with Southwest at SJC adding many of Southwest’s destinations from SJC into its network including SoCal (for crying out loud, they added SJC-BUR and not SFO-BUR and they also have RNO and DAL)
I wouldn’t see it as much of a surprise of Alaska opened SJC-DCA to compete with Southwest’s SJC-BWI service.
Yeah, but United does not have San Francisco to New York. They have San Francisco to Newark.
So it kind of just depends on whether or not this route might be profitable, which with all the services to Dulles, already a few to National, and Baltimore, it most likely won’t.
Alaska may be competing, but they are far from Southwest’s service to San Jose. Southwest has a 50.06% market share at San Jose (as of February 2019), meanwhile Alaska shares only 11.14%
Looking at those statistics, it’s pretty unlikely in my opinion that they’ll add that route specifically since United offers more destinations from Dulles than Alaska at Washington National.
UA used to have JFK service but decided to ditch it and expand at Newark. And I’m talking about Washington service from San Jose, not San Francisco (it’s very unlikely UA would expand any further at SJC)
Yes, it does depend if the route is profitable and even though Alaska’s presence at SJC is minuscule compared to Southwest, they have been expanding service at SJC and threatening Southwest’s dominance at SJC. They opened up SJC-PAE and will send their B39Ms (after Boeing fixes them and Alaska receives theirs) to SJC in the future.
Also, UA has more destinations from Dulles than Alaska does at National because Dulles is a hub for UA but National is not a hub for AS. And both of those airports only have service to SFO, not SJC.
Of course it’s unlikely for a SJC-IAD route but I don’t see it that unlikely for SJC-DCA.
And with the new gates at SJC, there is no doubt that Southwest and Alaska will keep on expanding at SJC
Yeah, but still. United has more destinations, that means more people are likely to connect both domestically and internationally from Dulles, so it’ll likely will be the option the bulk of travelers will choose. United also flies to National, and passengers can connect to larger United hubs and to larger airports from those hubs which also contributes to the low-profitability from the route most likely.
Of course Alaska and Southwest will expand as will San Jose. This is just based off of the other airlines and their routes from each of these airports
We’ll just have to see. But with the new gates at SJC, passenger traffic will continue to boom while the quality at SJC will remain the same or even better in terms of delays and cancellations.
This is why I said that there could be a SJC-DCA route with Alaska in the future…again, we just have to see what the airlines say
Southwest has very very limited slots at DCA so there’s no chance. They only have about four gates and there’s always a plane at them. Those flights are almost always heading to a large SWA hub such as DAL, MDW, HOU or a destination like MCO, FLL with few exceptions. Also if they did for some reason decide to add a California flight, I’m almost certain it would be to Oakland, San Diego, or maybe even LAX. But I couldn’t see SJC happening ANYTIME soon
