Alaska Airlines’ global footprint is growing again. Within the last year, the carrier has announced new service from Seattle, its hometown hub, to three overseas destinations: Tokyo, Seoul, and Rome. Now, it’s adding two more enviable landing spots.
Starting in spring 2026, Alaska will add a pair of transatlantic routes from Seattle: daily, year-round flights to London and a seasonal summer service to Reykjavík, Iceland. It’s part of a larger international push following the airline’s acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines in September 2024 (Hawaiian’s fleet of A330s and Boeing Dreamliners are longer range than anything Alaska had in its fleet prior to the merger).
“Alaska has figured out that there are real opportunities at their home base in Seattle,” Gary Leff, a travel expert and the founder of blog View From the Wing, told Afar. “Customers don’t have to leave them—including for their major competitor in that market, Delta—when they travel abroad.“
The service to London’s Heathrow Airport (LHR) will operate on a 787-9 Dreamliner, featuring 34 enclosed suites with fully lie-flat seats in business class, 79 extra-legroom premium-economy seats, and 187 economy seats (they’re the same planes Hawaiian debuted in 2024, though by the time they’re used on the Alaska routes, they’ll have Alaska branding). Meanwhile, itineraries to Iceland’s Keflavik Airport (KEF) will operate daily on a 737 MAX 8, a narrow-body plane that offers 12 recliners in the first-class cabins, 30 premium-class seats, and 115 economy seats.
Both flight paths will begin in May 2026, the same month Alaska’s new Rome route is slated to debut (Tokyo launched in May 2025 and Seoul starts on September 12, 2025).
Alaska Airlines has said it plans to offer at least 12 intercontinental flight paths from Seattle by 2030.
“The big winner so far in Alaska Airlines’ merger with Hawaiian is neither Alaska nor Hawaiian; it’s Seattle,” Scott Keyes, Going founder and chief flight expert, told Afar. “The northwest hub is enjoying a bevy of new routes to long-haul destinations.”
While Alaska has long had broad partnerships with other airlines (customers could use Alaska miles on Oneworld carriers, such as American Airlines and British Airways, as well as carriers of no alliance, like Condor and Icelandair), now that it has acquired a widebody fleet through the purchase of Hawaiian Airlines, the company is rethinking where it flies.
“They’re beginning to populate a route map that serves where their customers fly, but they didn’t use to take them,” Leff said. “London makes sense because it has long been among the most lucrative, important business markets in the world. Reykjavík is a destination they can reach with a smaller Boeing 737 MAX. It’s less expensive to fly, requires fewer passengers to make money, and is a hot seasonal route in the summertime.”
In addition to announcing the new routes, Alaska shared a new design for the livery of its 787-9 aircraft. Instead of the Indigenous man who was seen on the tail of Alaska’s fleet for a decade, the special-edition paint job, reserved for Alaska’s long-haul Dreamliners, will be rippling bands of deep blue and electric green, echoing the aurora borealis, a nod to the carrier’s namesake state.
