New Pacific Airlines (7H, Anchorage Ted Stevens) quietly terminated its twice-weekly Ontario International - Las Vegas Harry Reid roundtrips on January 1, 2024, due to ongoing ground delays at Las Vegas. It leaves the start-up with two routes - Ontario to Nashville International and Ontario to Reno/Tahoe.
New Pacific's booking portal has no flights available on the Las Vegas - Ontario city pair over the next six months. However, twice weekly roundtrips will continue to operate over the Ontario - Reno, Ontario - Nashville city pairs using B757-200 stock. ch-aviation capacities data shows that Frontier Airlines and Southwest Airlines also fly between Ontario and Las Vegas.
New Pacific, then operating as Northern Pacific Airways, launched in mid-2023 on the Ontario - Las Vegas route. In August, CEO Rob McKinney said the route was "highly successful" and enjoying a "steep booking curve." In September, flights started to Reno and Nashville. At around the same time, Northern Pacific rebranded to New Pacific to avoid lengthy litigation with a longstanding US railway company of the same name.
McKinney told ch-aviation that the loads on the LAX - LAS city pair were fine, but the airline was consistently getting two to three hour ground delays arriving and departing LAS. "This was not unique to us, with the short nature of the our flights, we found it not an acceptable level of service," he said. "There were times where the ground stops made the trip time longer than it would have been in an Uber. This is not the level of service we want to offer our customers."
New Pacific/Northern Pacific originally intended to fly between US destinations and North Asia using Anchorage as a stopover port, replicating the one-stop trans-Atlantic model employed by Icelandair. "While our ambitions to connect Asia and North America remains our end goal, we seek to expand throughout the US and North America in the meantime," New Pacific's website says.
