Alaska Airlines Adds Two New SoCal Routes from San Jose

For Silicon Valley Alaska Airlines frequent flyers, right now there aren’t really any good options when traveling to Orange County or San Diego. Here are the 3 ways we’ve done it in the past couple years:

1. Fly SJC-LAX on either Delta or American; rent a car and drive down to OC or San Diego
2. Fly Southwest SJC-SNA or SJC-SAN
3. Just drive the entire way, which can range from 7-12+ hours depending on traffic

Option 1 is the only one that actually earns Alaska Airlines miles, which the value of is more than offset by the cost of renting a car. Option 2 is the most practical and efficient, but for someone that rarely flies Southwest, the credits earned are basically worthless to me. And Option 3 sounds like a good idea, until you hit a parking lot on I-5 and curse yourself the rest of the way for not flying.

Well, it’s time to add a 4th option: you can just fly Alaska Airlines direct to both Orange County or San Diego starting June 8, 2016.

Alaska will be operating 3x daily non-stop service on both routes from San Jose and operated by 76-seat E175 jets, which even feature a 12-seat First Class cabin along with 12 additional “preferred” seats. The full route schedule can be found below:

Lastly, another great benefit is that since the routes will be operated by Alaska Airlines flights, they are eligible for the Bank of America companion pass. Based on some initial searches, I’m seeing round-trips to either destination in the $200-$225 range, meaning that you can save almost $100 by using the companion pass. This may not seem like a lot, but could work out really well for those that make frequent trips on this route and have plenty of passes to spare.