Originally Posted by
GO_CAT
What a sad day for this great carrier and more importantly a sad day for product innovation in general. It actually really annoys me that the big corporate guy is taking over the hip little guy. Virgin offers a great product differentiation across all its carriers of VS, VX, VA.
Let's not pretend that Alaska is some sort of corporate monolith. It only had around 150 planes, pre-merger. It's not like some monster like Delta or (shudder) United. To most of us in the PNW, Alaska
is seen as the "little guy."
I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised. Obviously, I'm coming to this from the perspective of a longtime AS flyer, but I've also flown VX and I feel like I got the sense of why it's has such a following. If I were an AS executive, after this decision, I'd expect to see a small (but vocal) group of people leave out of distaste for the merger or other ill-will. But I'd also expect a healthy number of former VX people to try an Alaska flight, maybe be pleasantly surprised, and stick with it either out of convenience or route network or whatever else. Over time the growth from the merger will outweigh the loss of that vocal minority.
What's that about promises? Underpromise and overdeliver?