Originally Posted by tom911
(Post 29259869)
Personally, as an Alaska/Virgin America flyer now, the main item that brought me to Alaska is Mileage Plan. Delta's program is more similar to what I left behind at AA/UA. Mileage Plan is pretty unique right now for a leisure traveler that has airport access in a city with a lot of Alaska/Virgin America flights.
|
Originally Posted by diver858
(Post 29262664)
WN Hawaii service is still nothing more than marketing hype, in an effort to keep west coast loyalists from jumping ship to AS. Remains to be seen if WN management is willing to take the risk the late move in to an already crowded market, where AS now has the most flights from the mainland, big 3 plus HA maintain a significant market share. As Hawaii passenger service is primarily leisure, demand will drop dramatically during the next recession / negative world event, history suggests we are due for at least one in the near term, may not be the best time to make such an investment.
Much of the recently added AS intra-CA service is provided by OO, on E175 aircraft --> MUCH lower cost structure, fewer seats to fill. Tilden likely anticipated price pressure from WN, is well positioned to fight it out. AS has developed a fairly substantial intra-CA network to secondary destinations, where WN has little to no presence, including service to PNW, including FAT, MMH, MRY, STS; in most cases, AS has no non-stop competitors. This may explained WN's late 2017 response: companion pass promotion to retain loyalists, recognizing lower fares would not be as effective, suggests WN recognize AS is not going away anytime soon. |
I logged just over 100000 BIS revenue status miles aboard Alaska operated flights in 2017. Were all of the flights up to Alaska's usual fine standards? Of course not - especially catering on mid-con and trans-con flights. But aside from that, I'm hard pressed to think of any instances on the ground or in the air where I witnessed or experienced overtly egregious lapses in service standards sufficient enough to make me consider switching my loyalty to Delta or anyone else. Nobody's perfect but on the whole I'm still quite pleased with the overall product offered by Alaska, especially the benefits offered to Gold and higher Mileage Plan members.
I logged a few flights on Southwest last year because they were convenient and/or cheap (routes like MCI/LAS/PHX to DEN come to mind) and while I appreciate the cost savings, had Alaska offered nonstops in the same markets I would've happily paid more to fly AS - if only for an assigned seat regardless of upgrade potential. |
Originally Posted by tphuang
(Post 29262960)
Which is why WN is treating this AS threat so seriously. If you don't think WN entering HI and adding capacity in its west coast focus cities will depress AS yields, then I guess we can wait until Q4 2018 and see where AS yields are at. WN is not looking to battle AS in PNW to California market. It's looking to kill yield of AS in the secondary intra-cali market and possibly to PDX.
|
Originally Posted by diver858
(Post 29265667)
How can additional WN capacity in its west coast focus cities depress AS yields in markets where they do not compete? WN is not expected to enter HI until at least August 2018 Southwest Hawaii Update New Details Revealed, would not be surprised to see this pushed back in to 2019, later if there is a recession in the second half of 2018. As I illustrated earlier, there is limited head-to-head non-stop competition in much of the intra-California market.
Southwest Declares War Against Alaska and Anyone Else Who Wants a Piece of California | Cranky Flier They also added some routes which clearly competes against AS like EWR-SAN, EWR-OAK (competes against EWR-SJC), SFO-AUS, SAN-PVR. As for HI, not only is WN an issue, but HA armed with A321NEO will be a huge game changer in the west coast to HI market. Now, A321NEO allows HA to enter market that did not justify daily 767 and add frequency in markets that supported more than daily 767/330. It will allow HA match AS schedules much better. We have already seen that at SAN, OAK and PDX. |
My 2c based on 3 years of MVPG
I moved to DL more or less completely last year. They've got plenty of issues and the miles are far less valuable, but at least I have the backing of a much more powerful network and a somewhat decent alliance. And instead of one major hub and two or three half-baked focus cities, I have a handful of major domestic hubs at my disposal when things go wrong or my schedule is tight (which it almost always is). For me, those are the most important things at the end of the day. I also took the WN companion pass offer, we will see how much I end up using it... |
[QUOTE=tphuang;29265832As for HI, not only is WN an issue, but HA armed with A321NEO will be a huge game changer in the west coast to HI market. Now, A321NEO allows HA to enter market that did not justify daily 767 and add frequency in markets that supported more than daily 767/330. It will allow HA match AS schedules much better. We have already seen that at SAN, OAK and PDX.[/QUOTE]
According to https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/...t-a321neo.html "...Hawaiian (Nasdaq: HA) will launch daily non-stop service between Portland and Kahului, Maui on Jan. 18 and flights between Oakland and Lihue, Kauai will begin April 11. This will be followed by flights between Los Angeles and the Kona Coast on the Big Island next summer..." This does not put much of a dent in to AS' West Coast Hawaii service, where it currently offers nonstop service to all 4 major islands from OAK, PDX, SAN, SEA and SJC. AS does not offer Hawaii service out of LAX, so HA's LAX-KOA is not a factor. From personal experience, I have flown AS to all 4 Hawaiian islands out of SAN dozens of times; flights have been consistently full, limited success with upgrades, in some cases unable to us GGU's. As you suggest above, HA's new A321neo service will increase capacity and competition, ~1 year head start on WN. It is one thing for WN to add service between existing stations in its battle with AS, quite another to build one from scratch, 2500 miles from the mainland - with limited ETOPS experience. Gary Kelly is first and foremost a financial guy, still not convinced he is ready to pull the trigger on what is becoming an increasingly risky proposition. |
Originally Posted by tphuang
(Post 29265832)
They added frequency in quite a few lines that competes against WN directly like SJC-PDX (from 4 to 6), OAK-PDX (5 to 6), SJC-SEA (4 to 5), OAK-SEA(6 to 7), SMF-SEA(4 to 6)
|
Full disclosure, I am a DL flyer, but I saw the Times article and have a couple friends that work for AS, so I figured there would be some interesting threads. It is really disappointing to see how things have gone at AS. Employees are really upset with the way things are being run. Originally they were upset with their contract being below market, but most employees were willing to forgive and take below market pay for what used to be a great place to work (as I am sure most of us would). The work environment changed quite rapidly when the merger did not go as well as anticipated and Horizon began running short on pilots. Horizon cut so many flights, they actually have a surplus of pilots, but they are expecting so many to quit, that they think eventually they will have the right number of pilots. With that kind of strategy, its no wonder employees are upset. Pilots are very upset with how little they are flying and are fleeing as fast as they can - everyone I know that works at AS has submitted applications to work at other airlines in the last month. I would really like to see AS turn the ship around so it can be a race to the top rather than the bottom, but its not looking good. Both airlines definitely have their pros and cons depending on your purpose of travel - the grass isn't always greener on the other side.
|
Originally Posted by diver858
(Post 29266043)
According to https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/...t-a321neo.html "...Hawaiian (Nasdaq: HA) will launch daily non-stop service between Portland and Kahului, Maui on Jan. 18 and flights between Oakland and Lihue, Kauai will begin April 11. This will be followed by flights between Los Angeles and the Kona Coast on the Big Island next summer..."
This does not put much of a dent in to AS' West Coast Hawaii service, where it currently offers nonstop service to all 4 major islands from OAK, PDX, SAN, SEA and SJC. AS does not offer Hawaii service out of LAX, so HA's LAX-KOA is not a factor. From personal experience, I have flown AS to all 4 Hawaiian islands out of SAN dozens of times; flights have been consistently full, limited success with upgrades, in some cases unable to us GGU's. As you suggest above, HA's new A321neo service will increase capacity and competition, ~1 year head start on WN. It is one thing for WN to add service between existing stations in its battle with AS, quite another to build one from scratch, 2500 miles from the mainland - with limited ETOPS experience. Gary Kelly is first and foremost a financial guy, still not convinced he is ready to pull the trigger on what is becoming an increasingly risky proposition. And while you're correct to note that HA's announced routes aren't anywhere near a full overlap with AS's Hawaii service, so far HA has had two A321s delivered from an eighteen-aircraft order. There's going to be plenty of expansion by the time the last one leaves the factory in 2020. |
Originally Posted by diver858
(Post 29266076)
I specifically referred Intra-California, making the point that AS has established a solid secondary network, with little to no competition on most routes.
|
Originally Posted by diver858
(Post 29266043)
According to https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/...t-a321neo.html "...Hawaiian (Nasdaq: HA) will launch daily non-stop service between Portland and Kahului, Maui on Jan. 18 and flights between Oakland and Lihue, Kauai will begin April 11. This will be followed by flights between Los Angeles and the Kona Coast on the Big Island next summer..."
This does not put much of a dent in to AS' West Coast Hawaii service, where it currently offers nonstop service to all 4 major islands from OAK, PDX, SAN, SEA and SJC. AS does not offer Hawaii service out of LAX, so HA's LAX-KOA is not a factor. From personal experience, I have flown AS to all 4 Hawaiian islands out of SAN dozens of times; flights have been consistently full, limited success with upgrades, in some cases unable to us GGU's. As you suggest above, HA's new A321neo service will increase capacity and competition, ~1 year head start on WN. It is one thing for WN to add service between existing stations in its battle with AS, quite another to build one from scratch, 2500 miles from the mainland - with limited ETOPS experience. Gary Kelly is first and foremost a financial guy, still not convinced he is ready to pull the trigger on what is becoming an increasingly risky proposition. As for WN with their ff base, they can just concentrate on adding service from airports where they dominate like OAK/SJC/SAN/SMF. These are airports where AS currently face the least competition to HI. I don't see why they can't sustain this service when they already fly transcon out of these airports. And you're correct to note that HA's announced routes aren't anywhere near a full overlap with AS's Hawaii service, so far HA has had two A321s delivered from an eighteen-aircraft order. There's going to be plenty of expansion by the time the last one leaves the factory in 2020.
Originally Posted by diver858
(Post 29266076)
I specifically referred Intra-California, making the point that AS has established a solid secondary network, with little to no competition on most routes.
Just checking Q2 fares on OO/QX SANMRY 119 SANSTS 157 SANFAR 140 by comparison for ones dominated by WN SANSMF 150 for WN and 126 for OO SANOAK 155 SANSJC 146 for WN and 135 for OO SANSFO 143 for WN, 141 for VX and 165 for WN Now considering WN is operating mainline vs OO here, they will have far lower cost. You get a sense of AAG yields on these secondary cali routes out of SAN. btw just for fun, I did a look up the avg fare from Q2 of non-LAX/SFO west coast airport to non-HNL airport which AS dominates. OAKOGG 317 for HA and 301 for AS PDXOGG 390 for AS SMFOGG 395 for AS SANOGG 381 for AS SJCOGG 327 for HA and 314 for AS SEAOGG 417 for AS and 355 for HA KOAOAK 348 for AS KOASAN 343 for AS KOASJC 349 for AS KOASEA 413 for AS LIHOAK 360 for HA and 340 for AS LIHSAN 359 for AS LIHSJC 351 for AS LIHSEA 429 for AS Notice how AS makes a killing out of the routes it monopolizes and how adding HA lowers their fare. We already know HA is entering SANOGG and they will probably enter KOA/LIH too at some point. And of course, there is the WN factor out of SAN/SJC/OAK. |
To me, the AS and VX combo is starting to seem eerily similar to the UA and CO merger. Perhaps my view is very simple, but it seems like AS management is taking their employees' and customers' good will toward the airline for granted.
I don't see Brad and his team getting on a quarterly earnings release call and disparaging their best customers as "over entitled." At the end of the day, the AS management do like their employees and customers (unlike the former UA/CO team). Nevertheless, silly cuts like not having pretzels or snack mix any longer, not giving a Biscoff away after 10 AM, or the cheapening of First class meals is apparent to customers. What will be more apparent to customers is if the culture and employee morale begins to flag as the merger really gets going in earnest in 2018. Mileage Plan is still a great program - but a devaluation and cheapening of the AS value proposition beyond MP - such as an engaged, friendly work force - will be detrimental to the long term viability of this airline. |
AS 75K Husband Switched to Delta
Originally Posted by hgdf
(Post 29258791)
I've already secured my DL status match from 75K to Platinum and will be flying them exclusively for the next few months. I've noticed that DL pilots apologize profusely if they're even slightly late, and the idea of disgruntled AS pilots deliberately dragging their heels makes my blood boil. Also, the FA's are never stingy with the Biscoffs. Who else is jumping ship in the near-term?
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/as-alaska-air-cuts-costs-employee-discontent-grows-and-passenger-loyalty-is-at-risk/ It sounds like some of their cost cutting measures are penny wise and pound foolish. As for the reduction in Biscoffs, my husband complained that they don't go with a glass of wine anyway. |
Originally Posted by tphuang
(Post 29266481)
btw just for fun, I did a look up the avg fare from Q2 of non-LAX/SFO west coast airport to non-HNL airport which AS dominates.
OAKOGG 317 for HA and 301 for AS PDXOGG 390 for AS SMFOGG 395 for AS SANOGG 381 for AS SJCOGG 327 for HA and 314 for AS SEAOGG 417 for AS and 355 for HA KOAOAK 348 for AS KOASAN 343 for AS KOASJC 349 for AS KOASEA 413 for AS LIHOAK 360 for HA and 340 for AS LIHSAN 359 for AS LIHSJC 351 for AS LIHSEA 429 for AS Notice how AS makes a killing out of the routes it monopolizes and how adding HA lowers their fare. We already know HA is entering SANOGG and they will probably enter KOA/LIH too at some point. And of course, there is the WN factor out of SAN/SJC/OAK. Edit: I don't think stomachs can be "queasy;" perhaps unsettled is the right word. |
All times are GMT -6. The time now is 11:53 pm. |
This site is owned, operated, and maintained by MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. Copyright © 2024 MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. All rights reserved. Designated trademarks are the property of their respective owners.