Seattle has been the largest U.S. or Canadian city without a nonstop flight to Mexico City. Until now.

Aeromexico this week said it would launch daily flights to Mexico City and on to Guadalajara. The daytime service is a big boost to businesses that operate in the area, saving travelers time and potential delay.

The additional flight is the latest since the Port of Seattle lowered fees to attract routes to Sea-Tac to better compete with Portland and Vancouver. (As a non-hub, the Seattle metro area has been the largest without a direct Mexico City connection.)

Who loses? Probably Alaska Airlines, which faces higher fuel costs and more competion. Today it said its bottom line worsened from a year ago and vowed to “do whatever it takes” to hold onto its dominant share of the West Coast market. Aeromexico’s addition eats into a market Alaska has been slowly building.

The latest Port of Seattle controversy erupted because commissioner Pat Davis supposedly cut a deal to pay the retiring CEO a full year’s compensation — without telling the rest of the board.

Running up costs and losing business to rivals apparenty hasn’t been enough to shake the port’s management culture. Even last winter’s fiasco over Christmas trees at Sea-Tac could be dismissed by some as part of wider cultural confusion.

The latest example of mismanagement ought to be enough for voters to demand change.

Alaska Airlines is rapidly changing from a whimsical local airline into a big business that has to compete on dreary criteria like on-time arrival. The transition parallels Cascadia’s changes amid globalization.

One sign of the shift for the Seattle-based airline is the replacement of older planes.

Friday’s Wall Street Journal ($) has a wistful story of the “Arctic Eagles” who piloted old 737-200 jets into Alaska’s small towns, supplying a lifeline of everything from groceries and medical supplies to tourists. Now they have to get used to new, more automated planes and deal with routine demands of flying in the Lower 48.

Although new route assignments will take the Anchorage-based pilots to sunny destinations like Cancún, Mexico, and Palm Springs, Calif., the pilots say they’ll miss the old challenges and the camaraderie with crew members and local passengers.

I remember riding one of the old planes into Kodiak and noticing then that the feel of the cabin and the on-board atmosphere was different from the Seattle-to-Anchorage flight. One captain, who co-piloted a landing in Juneau that took 10 approaches, told the WSJ that flying planes that get “food on the table in Nome” will always be more rewarding than “getting a bunch of irate people to Newark.”