Revisiting VX merger with AS instead of B6
With the recent AS earning call, it made me rethink about what could have happened had B6 bought VX instead. At the time of the merger, it certainly made sense for VX to bow out since they were under increasing pressure from mint and were at an all time high valuation. They probably would have went back into red had they stayed indepedent.
At the time, it certainly made a lot of sense from route point of view for AS since this allowed them to extend their reach into all of west coast with very little route overlap. It also made a lot of sense for B6 since they needed a west coast foot hold and similar customer base to VX.
I think the beginning of AS merger certainly looked very good since they were able to leverage the additional gate space and expand network tremendously. But since then, AS has provoked a war with WN in Cali and with UA at SFO. They've also taken meaningful hit to ff program loosing AA, DL and several other partners. Huge downgrades since they now draw the eyes of the tigers. and since June, VX has faced a lot more mint pressure and have been bleeding money on those routes. At the same time, B6 is now effectively locked out of West coast, but have taken that money and been able to expand its transcon network very effectively.
Now if B6 had won the bidding war, I think it would've went like this. No more money to expand mint network for a while, so it would've relied on existing VX fleet (with some kind of cabin refresh to more efficiently utilize FC space) for non JFK/BOS-SFO/LAX transcon routes and higher yielding mid con routes. They are good for that purpose. Kept the E90s for high frequency short haul routes including ones on west coast. Use old B6 A320s and A321s for lower yielding mid con routes and north south trunk routes and leisure routes. That would've been a pretty effective fleet even if they had drawn the attention of legacy carriers. AS probably would've continue to organically grow out of PNW and into california. It had money to keep growing at SJC and SAN with some additional space at LAX. It would've been locked in, but at least the ff partnerships would've remained.