milypan

getoffthe grid

I too am Bay Area based and have been MVPG for a number of years. Pre-merger, I had AS to the Pacific Northwest, Mexico and Hawaii, with AA and DL to take me virtually anywhere in the continental U.S. and Caribbean with some decent reciprocal benefits. Now, not so much. I now have VX (soon to be AS) to LAX, DAL, JFK, IAD and PHL. But when business travel takes me to many destinations in the middle of the country, I now likely have to fly AA and DL (or God forbid, UA) and not credit to AS. How do I get to ATL from SFO? How about PHX other than during Spring Training? Even SFO-DEN frequencies are being reduced. CUN from LAX and SFO is gone. International partners are sharply reduced. How is this not worse? What exactly is the "core market" you assert?

Explorer789

Merging Virgin America certainly helped expand their fleet size and pick up some new routes. As a smaller airline compared to the big three, there has to be a balance between maintaining current operations versus expansion.

Same with Southwest. They only just recently started international routes after focusing on domestic for so long.

milypan

apodo77

I moved from PDX area to FL and broke up with AS last year after the AS-DL partership was ended.
I am a Diamond on DL and the Skypesos program is about as ho hum as can be. I am pretty hub captive (DL is about the only option for my travels) but would much prefer more options.

BearX220

I disagree. I think the breakup with AA was a direct result of the merger. Losing DL was always a given -- the long goodbye was going on for years. The AS/AA partnership was mutually beneficial (AA weak in the west, AS weak everywhere else). But acquiring VS made AS more of a threat to AA's transcon business to / from California. So, yes, I think the total AS proposition now has lower utility for more customers, and we're all worse off. Airline and customers alike.

Of course, if AS had not acquired VX, B6 would have, and AS would have been marginalized in a different way; B6+VX would have added up to another network carrier. So for AS it was really a case of drown or be shot. Pass up VX and be slowly snuffed out by five much larger airlines' (DL/UA/AA/B6/WN) economies of scale and network superiority... or do the VX deal and lose the AA partnership while being forced, underequipped, into new competitive arenas AS doesn't really understand.

At this point it would be a net positive if AS could find a way to join OneWorld, as the current weird dog's breakfast of international partners yields less value in practice than is apparent on paper. But I suspect AA would veto it.

diver858

^^^

ashill

Yeah, it clearly would be great now. I suspect joining either Skyteam or oneworld could have happened when AS was smaller and partnered with both AA and DL in exchange for dropping the other. But now that AS is big enough for AA to see them as a real competitor in LAX/California and the threat of them leaving for Skyteam is gone, getting into oneworld would be a long shot if AS wanted it.

But at the same time, didn't AS say a few years ago (ie back when the AA and DL partnerships were still healthy, and AS was quite a bit smaller than they are now) that something like 85% of Mileage Plan redemptions and a similar majority of AS revenue were on AS-only itineraries? So I think FlyerTalkers may overblow the need AS to be all things to frequent business travellers and people who want to spend 100,000 frequent flyer miles on an F round-the-world redemption (I may exaggerate just a tad there. )

As others have said, ASVX is clearly worse for travellers like you. But AS's core market is moderately-frequent, price-sensitive but still willing to pay a small premium for a better experience customers based on the west coast. That's a very big market. It's also one that may be underserved, with the big three increasingly focusing on Diamond/Executive Platinum/Unobtanium elite consultants paying for flat bed long hauls/transcons on one end and basic economy fares on the other end; AS (smartly, I think) focuses on neither of those markets.

Skyjumper

You're kidding right? I've tried very hard over the last 6 months to do that and there have never been any reasonable options that met my business travel requirements. A one way trip through Seattle with a travel time of 16 hours may be an option but it's not reasonable. It seems AS has the flight times in Seattle selected to maximize utility for PNW flyers (a very reasonable business decision for them to have made) but when you tack on the flight from SFO/LAX + connection times required it just doesn't work. I would guess that, at some point, they'll address this and/or continue to beef up the flights out of SFO/LAX so that the connection isn't required. Unfortunately since I have to fly to major cities in the middle and eastern parts of the country I've been forced to spend way to much time on United. ;-)

The loss of AA is a killer for smaller towns. I say this as I just landed in Lansing, Michigan on another United flight. Sadly I fear my best path is to status match back to United because the new AS just doesn't (yet) work well for SF travelers. 😭

DoubleWidesFly

Correct, I am not looking for 2 stop overs. I updated the section to make more sense. I want to fly USA- Australia as award 1. Then fly Australia - New Zealand or Fiji or where ever as Award 2, But i cannot. I can fly LAX-SYD-MEL or LAX-SYD-MEL-AKL, But if I decide I want to spend a week in sydney, then a week in Melbourne, I cannot add a leg onto new zeland and pay for travel between the two countries as an Award. Just like I cannot fly between DXB and Europe, but I can fly USA-DXB-MXP. But as a standalone award I cannot book DXB-MXP.

DoubleWidesFly

I feel your pain, even from SEA. I needed to fly to Grand Rapids. AA, UA, DL were all less than $350 r/t a month advance. Alaska SEA-ORD or SEA-DTW was about $350. SEA-GRR was $1100!!! SEA-ORD AS, ORD-GRR AA codeshare. Yet ORD-GRR was only $200 r/t. It's clear that AS is not receiving decent/low prices on AA codeshare flights.

ashill

Now, to be fair, Australia-New Zealand redemptions are normally a bad value (just like domestic US redemptions) on AAirlines that allow them. Trans-Tasman flights can often be had for AU$250 or so round trip. But I still very much agree that the lack of award options that don't touch the US is a major weakness of Mileage Plan, made more frustrating because it seems like something that would be very easy for AS to fix.

jerry305

I'm in YWG.

After every AS flight I take (I have to get to MSP or YEG first), I check to see if the route map in the in-flight magazine still lists YWG.

Once I get home, I call Alaska and ask them to give me the details of any route served by AS to my market.
Each time I get put on hold for a long time, and they come back having no idea why it's listed.

It would be nice if they acknowledged the shortcomings of dissolving their Delta partnership, but they won't. The hubris isn't really a good fit for such a "nice" airline.

DoubleWidesFly

Absolutely agree! But the issue is much wide spread beyond OZ-NZ (this was just an example). Try flying within Europe, between the middle east and Africa, Europe, Asia, etc. The ONLY partner that Alaska Airlines has that allows all routes for redemption is Cathay Pacific (Minus Cathay Dragon a subsidiary of CX) and AA (US centric)

DoubleWidesFly

YWG Is grey on the route map in the magazine. This means there's partner service here (Such as Condor). I believe they use to a line to if from MSP, meaning codeshare service, but that was lost with the termination of the DL/AS partnership.