Why Does Anyone Fly Alaska? (Including Rants)
#76
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United's flight attendants have had a single contract since 2016. Skift/Bloomberg
Well, glad they finally got it approved.
#77
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I avoid Alaska out of SFO! I was a loyal VX flyer, but Alaska service is awful and bland. I am not impressed. I stick to Delta and some United mostly now and just connect when flying out of the Bay. Really sad that Alaska was allowed to take over VX and cheapen the brand for customers.
#78
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The people who work in customer service roles at AS are, on average, far better at their jobs than the people who work in customer service roles at any of the US3. That plus the traditional mileage based program are two of the primary reasons I fly AS when I can.
#79
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Financially, it is still very much a question as to whether or not it will be a fiasco for AS. ALK share holders have certainly not benefited from the 100 to 60 share price drop.
#80
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VX never had lifetime status, nor did they track lifetime flying. If you didn't earn status every year on VX, you went back to being an ordinary joe no matter how much prior VX flying you did. What exactly was dismissed by AS?
#81
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Perhaps operationally as AS took over the VX assets and everything was done according to AS rules and procedures, etc. The fleet was tiny, everything was just moved to AS FF program and reservation system. Even the past flying from VX loyalty members was completely dismissed in calculating life time flying. This was obviously much easier than merging two giant airlines together and trying to take things--even as simple as the livery--from both.
Financially, it is still very much a question as to whether or not it will be a fiasco for AS. ALK share holders have certainly not benefited from the 100 to 60 share price drop.
Financially, it is still very much a question as to whether or not it will be a fiasco for AS. ALK share holders have certainly not benefited from the 100 to 60 share price drop.
This has been rehashed once or thrice in this forum, but the relevant comparison is not how ALK share holders were doing before and after the merger but how they were doing before and how they would be doing if B6 had bought VX instead. It is not clear whether AS will remain financially successful when this merger is fully shaken out, but I doubt they would have been in good shape if B6VX were a very large west coast and transcon competitor.
#83
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The contract was approved in 2016 but the FAs are still functionally sUA and sCO until this fall. It's been a sore point at hubs that maintain both sUA and sCO bases- sUA FAs with 20 years seniority are stuck on reserve while sCO FAs with as little as 3 years (or something like that, I'm too lazy to go find the chart) hold lines at the same hub.
#84
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The contract was approved in 2016 but the FAs are still functionally sUA and sCO until this fall. It's been a sore point at hubs that maintain both sUA and sCO bases- sUA FAs with 20 years seniority are stuck on reserve while sCO FAs with as little as 3 years (or something like that, I'm too lazy to go find the chart) hold lines at the same hub.
Yes, some comments in the less frequented threads (and harder to search IMO) about very senior FAs basically getting the shaft.
IMHO, DL and AS got it right: it's not a merger, it's a takeover / purchase. United Continental Holdings as merger of equals, um, not so much. Jury is still out on AA merger, again IMHO
I don't have a dog in AS merger, and I certainly understand why Virgin fliers would be unhappy about losing what they came to expect, but from posts and my own personal reading outside FT, it seems that fliers LOVED Virgin, but investors, not so much as it was / is an unsustainable model, i.e. not making money when all others are making money hand over fist while the economy is booming.
#85
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I don't have a dog in AS merger, and I certainly understand why Virgin fliers would be unhappy about losing what they came to expect, but from posts and my own personal reading outside FT, it seems that fliers LOVED Virgin, but investors, not so much as it was / is an unsustainable model, i.e. not making money when all others are making money hand over fist while the economy is booming.
#86
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Investors LOVED VX. Virgin allowed Silver and Gold members to buy at the IPO price and we were able to sell the day the buy out was announced for double the price in a fairly short time frame. They won big. The customers and ALK..not so much so far.
#87
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I would tend to believe that the vast majority of VX stockholders were not Elevate members who were able to take advantage of that sweetheart deal
Last edited by dayone; Aug 14, 2018 at 5:35 pm Reason: Added parentheses to highlight text added to quote.
#88
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Everybody that held stock made money. Even those that bought later made out like bandits as ALK paid such a ridiculous premium.
#89
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Last edited by EmailKid; Aug 14, 2018 at 7:55 pm Reason: On the other hand ...