Today Marks Day One of the Disappointing Single Afternoon Flight Option in Yakima

It's a day I've been dreading since I first learned about Yakima dropping to one flight earlier this year. Today marks the first time for who-knows-how long that you can only fly out of Yakima once a day and it's not even that convenient of a flight if you're connecting to somewhere else.

Yakima, in recent years, had a few flight options to fly to Seattle to grab your connecting flight. Yes, it would've been wonderful if we had more direct flight options like flying to Portland, Las Vegas or LA out of Yakima. That would be very convenient. I think most in Yakima were just used to that easy flight to Seattle and connecting from there to just about anywhere. Taking that early morning flight where after a little while at SeaTac during a layover we'd be well on our way and often times landing anywhere in the US while the sun was still up. That is mostly no longer the case.

Now that they removed the early morning flight and only keeping the 2:00 p.m. flight our same-day flight options are severely limited as most flight may not connect after we land in Seattle. There are still a few same-day flight options, mostly on the west side like Las Vegas and Los Angeles and with the time difference, a place like Hawaii would make sense. I have a flight to Nashville later this year and am taking the 2:00 p.m. flight but I won't be landing in Nashville until midnight essentially losing that entire day.

Yes, there is also the option to drive to Tri-Cities that has more options than just Alaska Air or can drive to Seattle or take the Airporter Shuttle which is always an option. Just wish we weren't losing that early flight. If they dropped the afternoon flight and only kept it so Alaska Airlines out of Yakima would fly out in the morning and return at Midnight I'd be cool with that because most of my flights are booked that way.

Here's hoping it's just temporary and we'll get another flight option later in 2023. Fingers Crossed.