Originally Posted by
SeattleDavid
That description fits Alaska before the Virgin America merger, but the Bay Area (SFO, OAK and SJC) and LAX are all quite significant operations....
I said, accurately, AS was focused on the US west coast corridor. Since the VX merger AS has actually cut SFO routes and capacity considerably, and remains a SEA-centric airline. They also cut VX amenities, hard-product features, etc. that were key differentiators in the SFO market where UA dominates, meaning the Bay Area is sort of nonplussed by the merged airline, which now offers a last-in-class transcon F product plus thin frequencies unless you're traveling up and down the west coast. I think BA, CX, etc. will see little opportunity to deliver customers to SFO for onward travel on AS. SEA and (to a lesser extent) PDX are different stories.
Originally Posted by
ashill
Even after the merger, they are a secondary (SFO) or tertiary (LAX) player even in their hubs outside the Pacific Northwest.
Quite right. It is said that AS + VX was a shotgun marriage of sorts. JetBlue was bidding for Virgin America and THAT merger would have created a formidable
#5 national airline in the US with AS begging for crumbs. The objective of the merger for AS was to keep VX away from JetBlue; otherwise AS was kind of the dog that caught the car. It didn't really know what to do with its prize and has struggled to digest VX. Alaska remains Seattle's hometown sweetheart of an airline but does not have great impact anywhere else. One benefit of joining OW is that it might keep AS and vits FF program on more peoples' radar. When they lost both DL and AA as domestic partners they became even more of an isolated play.