Originally Posted by
WebTraveler
What you miss is that I used to be able to get to ANYWHERE in the United States and much of the world via Alaska Airlines or a an airline where I could earn miles and status for the Alaska Mileage Plan. I did not need another frequent flyer account. I had it all.
Now I need to fly three airlines to just get to my destinations. It is that simple. Now my flying is all over the place. I am not ever going to say that is a good thing. It's not. Maybe the past was too good to last forever. But darn, this whole Virgin America business, from MY standpoint has been a disaster. Loyalty is worth something - I was loyal to Alaska and Alaska was loyal to me. Alaska blinked, not me.
Because of the Virgin America fiasco (and yes, to me it is a fiasco) I fly Alaska less on the core routes. Why take them to LAX, SFO, LAS, SAN, PHX? I can take someone else now, and I have because I figure I am needing to build my business with United & Southwest to get some perk out of it.
Alaska used to get a TON of Delta and American customers as well, simply by offering the miles.....those have largely dried up now, and Alaska probably carries less passengers in Portland and other small operations because of it.
So I am not going to stand up and jump for joy. The whole offering is less for me. I get it, I have to go elsewhere now 50% or so of the time. I am just not happy with it. And there's no more loyalty from Alaska towards me, how can I give Alaska loyalty?
Not that I expect this to keep you from dying mad, but there were very legitimate reasons for Delta and American to end the arrangements that you seem to think were going to last forever save for the VX acquisition.
You might not have noticed this in your focus on PDX, but Delta wants SEA business and at the time they signed that deal with AS, they didn’t have a SEA hub. You probably don’t want to be too friendly with a competitor in your brand new hub.
In American’s case, their deal with Alaska predates the AA/US merger, was done under a different CEO and management team, and happened while American was in Chapter 11 and didn’t have antitrust-exempt TATL/TPAC partnerships or a revenue-based frequent flier program. Leaking money to Alaska by paying them for miles and having people “cheat” on AAdvantage by getting AA benefits as an Alaska elite becomes more important to stop when your goal is to have your elite program capture revenue. Note that the 2018 restructuring stops that; you earn AA miles on AA tickets for AS domestic flights, which makes AA happy,
So your argument that the VX purchase ruined it all is not proven. It’s possible the deep AS relationship could have been dumped without it by AA, just like B6 was.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/today...-pact/6251545/
And it’s pretty much a certainty that the AS-DL relationship was toast once DL wanted SEA for themselves.