Alaska Airlines Is 7th Firm to Join Flight From Long Beach Airport : Travel: The carrier, once the facility’s biggest customer, cites economic reasons for ending services.

The sky’s the limit, Alaska Airlines’ slogan used to proclaim, but it no longer applies to Long Beach. The airline, which once ran a dozen flights a day out of Long Beach Airport, has announced that it is pulling out Jan. 30.

Once the airport’s biggest customer, Alaska Airlines becomes the seventh commercial airline to abandon Long Beach in five years, after USAir, Continental, Delta, TWA, United and American. The move will leave only six daily commercial and four cargo flights out of the sputtering airport.

“It’s strictly an economic kind of issue,” company spokesman Lou Cancelmi said. “There just isn’t the demand for Long Beach service.”

In 1990, Alaska was running 12 flights a day out of Long Beach, but the number dwindled to two last spring. Now, the airport’s entire complement of daily flights consists of four a day by America West, and two each by Sun Jet, Federal Express and UPS.

The departure of Alaska comes as the city is seeking to revive the commercial air business to bring revenue into Long Beach. A tentative agreement in an 11-year-old legal dispute was worked out last month with airlines, allowing at least 41 commercial flights a day out of the airport.

The Alaska Airlines move had been expected, airport spokeswoman Lonnie Mitchell said. “They’ve been going through a lot of changes in light of the competitive situation,” she said.

Although departing airlines have all cited economic problems as reasons for abandoning Long Beach, a rancorous dispute about noise levels was clearly a factor. In the early 1980s, neighborhood groups initiated legal actions and packed City Council meetings, leading to a strict noise-reduction code at the airport.

“There was a desire by the city to keep a lid on operations at the same time other airports were aggressively marketing their facilities,” Cancelmi said.

As flights dwindled in Long Beach, Alaska beefed up its operations at Los Angeles, from three departures a day to three dozen. The airline also operates out of Ontario, Burbank and John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

City officials said they remain optimistic about the airport’s future. The city is in discussions with 14 other possible Long Beach commercial carriers, most of them start-up airlines, to bring new business to the airport, Mitchell said.

“We’re sorry to see Alaska withdraw its service to the Pacific Northwest,” Mitchell said. “But it opens up a whole West Coast market to some new entrant.”