Horizon Air — the regional airline that is part of Alaska Air Group, carrying passengers on shorter flights throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond — is cutting its flight schedule this summer because of a severe shortage of pilots for its Q400 turboprop planes.
The shortage became a crisis this past month when Horizon was forced to cancel more than 318 flights because it didn’t have enough pilots to fly all its planes.
In response, the airline is now pre-emptively canceling flights later in the summer and is weighing if it needs to pare its schedules for the rest of the year.
Example of cancellations
Examples where one flight will be canceled on each of these routes:
Seattle and Boise: Now with 8 daily flights
Seattle and Spokane: Now with 15 daily flights
Seattle and Portland: Now with 26 daily flights
Redmond and Portland: Now with 5 daily flights
Portland and Sacramento, Calif.: Now with 3 or 4 daily flights
In an effort to reduce cancellations, it’s also sending out managers who are qualified pilots to fly the planes and offering double pay to pilots who fly extra flights.
Featured Video
Boeing 787 Dreamliner first flight (1:38)
Most Read Stories
Save over 90% on select subscriptions.
On Thursday, Horizon Chief Executive Dave Campbell sent a memo to employees announcing that the airline is cutting multiple flights in August and is studying its fall and winter timetables “to ensure we have schedules that we can reliably operate.”
Campbell wrote that the pilot shortage, coupled with the airline’s unprecedented growth