Alaska Airlines is launching daily service Aug. 18 at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to Seattle.

The airline will offer daily direct flights to Seattle. The flights will be on a Boeing 737 and will offer 159 seats per flight. Seats are available now.

The new airline was announced at a news conference at CVG on Friday.

Alaska Airlines will join Delta as the two airlines offering direct flights to Seattle, said airport CEO Candace S. McGraw.

The about five-hour flights to Seattle will depart at 5:50 p.m., and return flights back to Cincinnati will depart at 9:20 a.m. from Seattle, McGraw said.

McGraw said adding Alaska, the fifth-largest U.S. air carrier, means CVG has flights from all five of the biggest U.S. carriers. Alaska gives CVG 10 passenger airlines.

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Prior to the announcement, the newest airline operating at CVG was Southwest Airlines, which opened there in June 2017.

WOW air launched at the airport in May 2018 and was gone five months later.

Midwest Express officials said in August 2019 that Cincinnati would be one of its first destinations from Milwaukee. The once-defunct airline, known for serving chocolate chip cookies, does not currently serve CVG.

But the nine other passenger airlines and tour operators that fly in and out of CVG in Kenton County have added multiple destinations and flights in recent years.

The airport served more than 9.1 million passengers in 2019. That's a 34% increase since 2016.

Also, DHL operates an air cargo hub at CVG and Amazon Prime Air is building a $1.5 billion air cargo hub there that is set to open in 2021.

Amazon’s coming cargo hub is one of the reasons why Alaska wanted to come to CVG, but not the only reason, as Procter & Gamble and GE Aviation were among other corporate clients who have been asking for Seattle service, Alaska Airlines executive Michael Britman said over the phone during the press conference.

Britman declined to discuss ticket prices, saying that they change frequently.

Cincinnati is Alaska Airlines' 93rd nonstop destination out of Seattle, according to an airline news release provided at the conclusion of the press conference.

Flights to Hawaii on Alaska Airlines are available out of Seattle. Trips to Asia are enabled by Alaska partner airlines on nonstop flights from Seattle to Tokyo, Japan, and Hong Kong and Singapore, China, according to the release.

“For years we’ve heard from flyers and our corporate clients that they’d like Seattle’s hometown carrier to connect Cincinnati with the Puget Sound region,” said Brett Catlin, Alaska Airlines managing director of capacity planning and alliances in the release. “We couldn’t be more excited to rollout our newest Midwest destination adding the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region to the Alaska Airlines network while furthering our commitment to Seattle, where we will offer 350 daily departures this summer.”

The Enquirer will update this story as more information becomes available.

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