Alaska Airlines is pushing its Seattle international build-out further, with two new long-haul routes confirmed for 2027 — and both will fly on aircraft borrowed from its Hawaiian Airlines stable.
Starting May 14, 2027, Alaska will operate four flights a week from Seattle to Osaka Kansai, with an 11-hour-50-minute westbound hop landing in Japan late afternoon local time. From June 11, a three-times-weekly Seattle–Papeete service begins, departing just before midnight and touching down in Tahiti at 7:20 in the morning — a handy arrival if you're connecting onward to Bora Bora or another island. Both routes use Hawaiian's Airbus A330-200s, configured 2-2-2 in business class. Alaska won't retrofit these jets with new cabins until 2028, so early flyers get the current Hawaiian product.
For West Coast travellers, the Osaka flight is more than a city break enabler: Kansai airport is the natural gateway to Kyoto, Nara and the wider region. And because Seattle is Alaska's biggest hub, the airline can feed these flights from across its domestic network — something Air Tahiti Nui lacked when it tried and abandoned its own Seattle–Tahiti route. Alaska has also teased a partnership with Air Tahiti, whose new all-business-class ATR 72-600s shuttle passengers between islands.
There's a quirk worth noting: you'll be able to fly a Hawaiian-branded plane from Washington State to Japan or French Polynesia without going anywhere near Hawaii. It's not the first time — Alaska has flown Alaska-branded routes far from Alaska for years — but Hawaiian's identity has always been unusually tied to its home islands, so the sight of its livery heading to Osaka is a symbol of how much has changed since the merger.
The open question is Honolulu. Both the existing Honolulu–Osaka and Honolulu–Tahiti routes remain on sale, so these are additions rather than replacements. But A330 flying time is finite, and Alaska will weigh what each aircraft earns from Honolulu versus Seattle, where connection traffic sweetens the economics. The markets aren't identical — a Japanese holidaymaker bound for Waikiki is not the same customer as one visiting the Pacific Northwest, and Honolulu–Papeete remains the only nonstop between Hawaii and French Polynesia. Still, a direct Seattle option may siphon mainland passengers who previously connected through Honolulu, and the overlap looks hard to justify indefinitely. Hawaiian is investing in new A330 interiors from 2028, so the fleet isn't going anywhere — just possibly elsewhere.
For holiday planners, the takeaway is simple: more nonstop options from Seattle to two very different escapes, with decent timings and a lie-flat-friendly business cabin, at least until the refits roll out. Book the Tahiti flight if island-hopping is the goal — the morning arrival is designed for it.
Original source: Live and Let's Fly
