Yeah, but that's not the question. The question is whether the cost for AS to create a subfleet (and therefore severely restrict their ability to route aircraft as, say, JFK-SEA-SFO-SEA-ANC-SEA-JFK or whatever) and have fewer seats to sell outweighed by the revenue premium they could get by jumping into the premium transcon market, which already has four other major players? It's obviously possible that the answer is yes (B6, with a vaguely similar network in that it's focused on one cost, although not to the extent that AS's network is, has decided it is), but the fact that "everyone" prefers AS F to Mint only has a limited bearing on whether it makes sense for AS to add the cost and complexity. AS management in general has stayed pretty good at remaining focused on their market.

I note that the OP who claimed they only consider AS "when flying to actual Alaska" is NYC-based. That's the only class of customer who would possibly have such a limited range of markets in which they'd consider AS; for pretty much any flyer, the vast majority of AS customers don't have lie-flat options on most of their routes, no matter the airline they choose. And NYC-based flyers aren't an important enough market for AS to design their fleet around. In fact, it's precisely because NYC is purely an outstation for AS that all or most of AS's NYC routes have lie-flat competition.