Originally Posted by
ryandc99
to me it feels like AS miles for those members not living in SEA/PDX are increasing worthless if one wants to travel domestically.
Uh, really? You think Skymiles is a better program out of Alaska than Alaska MP is?
A good chunk of AS's routes don't touch Seattle or Portland. Even more now with the VX merger and the CA expansion. A lot of routes got announced this month, none of them touched SEA/PDX. You have Hawaii, Mexico...
Yes, if you invested in Alaska's program thinking they would be pals and friends with Delta forever and ever after Delta announced they would expand at SEA, that's... unfortunate. Good thing you had about, oh, four years notice on that one. Those people are also a teeny tiny slice of people, mostly crazy FlyerTalkers who do things like fly JFK-SFO-LAX-DFW-ORD-MIA because ch-ching, miles (back in the day), who pick airlines not based on who flies them every day with their name on the side of the plane, but based on alphabet soup RDM/EQM. AS will be sad to see you walk because the DL partnership ended, but not as sad as if they saw DL drive them out of business.
Originally Posted by
ryandc99
UA anyone?
I call this vignette "A Phone Call from Brad to Oscar":
"Hey, Oscar, we just broke up with an airline that expanded massively at our West Coast hub in Seattle. Incidentally, we would like to massively expand at YOUR West Coast hub at San Francisco! Plus your other hub at LA! But please be our domestic partner! We'd be best buddies!"
(dial tone)
/fin