Alaska Airlines Adds Paris And Athens In 2027

Alaska Airlines will add Athens and Paris to its Seattle long-haul network next year, extending a transformation that has taken the carrier from a largely West Coast operator to one with a widebody transatlantic map. Both routes will be flown seasonally with the airline's Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.

According to schedule filings published by AeroRoutes on August 20, Seattle–Athens begins on May 12, 2027 with three weekly frequencies. Flight AS196 departs Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 16:30 and arrives in Athens at 14:20 the following day, while the return AS197 leaves Athens at 16:20 and lands back in Seattle at 18:55 the same day.

Seattle–Paris Charles de Gaulle follows on May 25, 2027 and is the larger of the two, scheduled five times weekly. AS136 is timed out of Seattle at 17:25 with a 12:25 next-day arrival in Paris; AS137 operates back from Charles de Gaulle at 14:25, reaching Seattle at 15:50. Both services are planned to run seasonally through October.

Simple Flying reports that the two additions take Alaska's European offering to five routes from Seattle, deepening a head-to-head contest with Delta Air Lines in the Pacific Northwest. Delta has built Seattle into a major transatlantic and transpacific gateway of its own, and Alaska's widebody push places the two carriers in direct competition on long-haul leisure and premium traffic out of the same airport.

The choice of the 787-9 matters here. Alaska only began operating Alaska-branded widebody flying relatively recently, and the Dreamliner is the aircraft underpinning every one of these new markets. The 787-9 is a twin-aisle, twin-engine type with the range to reach southern and eastern Europe from the Pacific Northwest nonstop, something none of the airline's narrowbodies could sustain on a year-round commercial basis.

Seasonality is the other notable detail. By running both markets from May through October rather than year-round, Alaska is targeting the peak summer leisure window — Athens in particular is heavily weighted toward summer demand for the Greek islands, while Paris carries a broader mix of leisure, visiting-friends-and-relatives and corporate traffic. Seasonal deployment also frees the widebodies for other missions during the slower northern winter.

Athens is a notable addition because it takes Alaska beyond the traditional Western European gateways that US carriers have historically favoured from the West Coast. Nonstop service between the Pacific Northwest and Greece has been rare, and a three-weekly pattern is a measured way to test whether the market can support it without committing daily widebody capacity from day one.

Paris, by contrast, is one of the most heavily served transatlantic markets in the world, and five weekly flights signals more confidence in baseline demand. It also gives Alaska a presence at a major European hub airport, which matters for connecting itineraries beyond the gateway city.

Both routes remain subject to the usual regulatory and commercial confirmations that accompany schedule filings this far ahead of launch, and timings can shift before tickets go on sale. For now, the filings give a clear picture of how Alaska intends to spend its Dreamliner hours in the summer of 2027.

Sources: Simple Flying, AeroRoutes. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By Elena Vargas.