Originally Posted by
Baze
As a resident of Oahu who flies 60+ segments a year 99% inter island. This merger sucks. I am Hawaiian Pualani Platinum which is top tier. After the merger and the FF programs merging I will now be considered only MVP Gold. I have enjoyed free upgrades to F on about 95% of my flights and almost all the ones I don't get F I am in the extra comfort seats. I fear most of this will go away after the merger being only a MVPGold. Addressing the many posts I saw the E175 planes would be a good option, no they wouldn't. Way too small. And as for some posts I saw about not many locals/residents fly inter island, I beg to differ. I would say most inter island flights are about 50% if not more full of locals/residents. Many commute to other islands for work, many fly to other islands to visit family. Just my 2 cents that I am not for this merger. When I was based in the mainland I did fly Alaska almost exclusively unless they didn't go where I needed. Status matched over to HA when I moved here.
Your upgrade percentage is a lot better than mine! I'm maybe a bit better than 50% as a Plat. If you're at 95%, that probably means you're mostly on flights that don't necessarily have more Plats than first class seats, and the merger doesn't seem likely to change that dramatically. I'd bet that your percentage might go down a bit but won't drop off a cliff.
On the broader issue of status, I looked a bit at the timeline of the VX merger. That one was about 8 months from announcement to close (April-December 2016). Reciprocal status matching started shortly after closing (Jan 2017), but it was another year before the FFPs started to be combined and status started to be based on combined flying over the two carriers. So my speculation here is that they'll push to close by the end of 2024 if they possibly can, that 2025 status will be basically the higher of what was earned on AS or HA, and 2026 status will be based on 2025 combined flying across the merged carriers. Maybe they'll be able to combine the accounts earlier, but not betting on it.