San Diego's recently announced nonstop flight to Washington, D.C. aboard Alaska Airlines is now available for booking.

A week after learning that the airline had won a coveted slot at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Alaska posted online that tickets are now on sale for San Diego departures starting March 17 and return flights from Reagan beginning March 18.

The daily flight from San Diego to the Reagan airport, which is just outside D.C., will depart at 2:10 p.m. and arrive at 9:55 p.m. The return flight will leave at 8 a.m. and get into San Diego at 10:35 a.m.

The new, highly coveted nonstop arose out of a competition of sorts when new federal legislation opened up five slots at the tightly regulated Reagan National airport. As a smaller national airport, it is subject to the perimeter rule, which limits nonstop flights in and out of Reagan to 1,250 miles from Washington, unless the government grants an exception. According to the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority, there are 40 flights out of the airport's more than 800 daily flights that fall under that exception

San Diego will now join four other West Coast destinations -- Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- that also have nonstops to Reagan via Alaska Airlines.

The only previous time San Diego had a nonstop route to Reagan National was in 2012 when then US Airways was granted an exception for San Diego. That lasted a couple of years until American Airlines merged with US Airways and decided to transfer its Reagan National slot from San Diego to Los Angeles.