Alaska Airlines Will Fly Seattle to Athens and Paris, Its Longest Routes Yet

Alaska Airlines announced on August 20, 2026 that it will begin nonstop service from Seattle to Athens and Paris in the spring of 2027, using its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners. The Athens flight will be the longest route the carrier has ever operated.

Alaska said the Athens service starts May 12, 2027 and the Paris service on May 25, 2027, with both running seasonally through October. Introductory roundtrip Main Cabin fares started at $999 and were on sale in the US through August 26.

What Alaska Actually Announced

According to the airline’s announcement, Athens gets three flights a week as AS196, departing Seattle at 4:30 p.m. and arriving the following afternoon. Paris Charles de Gaulle gets five flights a week as AS136, leaving Seattle at 5:25 p.m.

Route	Starts	Frequency	Great-circle distance
Seattle to Athens (AS196)	May 12, 2027	3x weekly	About 6,180 miles (9,950 km)
Seattle to Paris CDG (AS136)	May 25, 2027	5x weekly	About 5,000 miles (8,050 km)

Both routes will be flown by the Boeing 787-9, which Alaska is fitting with lie-flat business class suites and Starlink Wi-Fi. Athens International Airport chief executive George Kallimasias called it the first-ever nonstop service to Athens from the Pacific Northwest.

At roughly 6,180 miles, Seattle to Athens comfortably clears Alaska’s current distance record, its Rome route at about 5,670 miles. That still leaves it well short of the longest flights in the world, which run past 9,000 miles.

Seattle Is Being Rebuilt Into a Long-Haul Gateway

The two routes are a step in a much larger plan. Alaska says it will serve seven intercontinental destinations from Seattle-Tacoma International by summer 2027, and it has committed to adding at least five more by 2030.

That is a fast transformation for an airline that flew no intercontinental routes at all before 2025. Alaska’s long-haul network today, Reykjavik, London, Rome, Seoul and Tokyo, was built almost entirely in the past two years.

The enabler was the Hawaiian Airlines merger, which handed Alaska a widebody fleet and the crews and certificates to operate it. Alaska has since ordered more 787s, and plans to base a large part of that fleet in Seattle.

Seattle is an unusual place to build a European gateway. It is the farthest major US metro from Europe, which is exactly why these routes need a modern widebody: shorter-range jets simply cannot reach Athens from the Pacific Northwest with a useful payload.

One Route Is Uncontested, the Other Is Not

Athens and Paris are very different competitive propositions. No airline currently flies nonstop between the US West Coast and Athens, so Alaska will have that market to itself, at least initially.

Paris is the opposite. Delta and its SkyTeam partner Air France already operate Seattle to Charles de Gaulle, so Alaska is entering an established route against an incumbent joint venture with far deeper European feed.

That pattern is now familiar in Seattle. Delta has matched Alaska on Seattle long-haul flying repeatedly, most recently by adding its own Seattle to Tokyo Narita service for March 2027.

Seasonal, sub-daily service is the standard way an airline tests a thin long-haul market. Athens in particular is a leisure route with a short peak, which is why three weekly summer flights, rather than a year-round daily, is the sensible opening bet.