VegasGambler

How many times do I have to fly them before I notice that every single experience is better than what is even allowed by AS policy? Sorry that we're not all slow to pick up on the obvious.

channa

VX was profitable at the time of the acquisition. It was sold off because of the ridiculously high price over market that AS paid for it (some like a 47% premium over market value). AS literally paid about $1 billion more for VX than its market value. A financially unviable company does not generate that kind of premium.

Any company will sell for the right price. My house is not for sale. But offer me a million bucks over market value, and I'll be out by the end of the month.

RAD_PDX

I'll jump into the fray. The food on United is disgusting compared to what Alaska currently offers. Full disclosure, this is based off of 4 United flights in the past 3 months, including a Tcon 787-10 flight.

chrisl137

I haven't flown UA at all this year, but have flown UA for most of the last 8 years, and also a lot back in the early 2000s (when I was rolling in upgrades). For non-PS routes, AS F compares favorably to UA F. The seats are better and I find the food better on average. And if you look at how AS hands out upgrades and markets MP, they expect to sell a bunch of their F space as instant upgrades to HVF - either as instant upgrades or as upgrades to various levels of FF in the last 96 hours before the flight. Given that pricing model, their F is competitively priced. They just hide it by not selling it listed as F. It definitely doesn't compare to the service and seats on PS routes (and the DL and AA equivalents), but it's mostly not priced like that, either. If you fly on OPM and are only allowed to buy Y cabin, you can't even get CPUs on the UA PS routes (not like you can really get them anymore on any routes, anyway), while on AS they're very available, even as an MVP.

williwaw

Eastbay1K

The answer is the same as the number of licks that it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. And if you don't get the reference, you'll have to look it up.

NoLaGent

And even with your small sample size, you're right on the money. It's the best quality of AS F, at the moment.

And to the OP: I don't know if PVR-LAX is a double catered flight, but perhaps you had local catering from that station? I really don't know, but their food out of SFO and SEA is quite good these days, if not the best. I consider DL a close second, with AA & UA consistently awful.

VegasGambler

Food is a matter of opinion but I find most of the AS fare inedible. My go-to is to pre-order the cheese plate and grab a meal at the airport to take on the plane. To be blunt, the AS food is ridiculous hipster crap (other than breakfast, which is pretty good, but about half the size it should be)

If you are willing to play the upgrade game it may be easier to get into F on certain routes, but that's not really the point here. This is about the value when you buy it outright. I also question your stament about ease of upgrade on what other airlines would have as a premium route as MVP. I flew quite a few SFO-NYC round trips as MVP and I was never even close to being upgraded. (SFO-Hawaii, on the other hand, is a fairly easy upgrade, even as MVP, and certainly as MVPG... and I'd still rather spend $650 on UA than $200 on AS with an almost guaranteed upgrade)

And, again, even on non-premium routes, I've had better service in first class on other airlines in the last couple of years.

Actually, on all the domestic first class flights I've ever taken (mostly VX up until a couple of years ago, but also some other airlines when I've wanted to go beyond their network, and several more on other airlines in the past 2 years) I've gotten a full bar PDB on every single non-AS flight. My understanding is that if I keep flying AA this perfect record is sure to be broken, but, up until now, AS is the only airline not to offer me one.

jinglish

Oh, come on; the circumstances of the merger are pretty well-established. AS didn't just offer VX an obscene amount of money out of the blue; the investors had already decided to sell, and it only got that high because they wanted to prevent B6 from buying a west coast presence in their stead.

sfozrhfco

gobeavs8

That is a gross oversimplification of how mergers and acquisitions work.

VegasGambler

But to say that it was not sustainable is simply incorrect, no matter how many times people here repeat it. A profitable company is sustainable. Now, of course, you can be more profitable if you offer a worse product at higher prices, but that does not mean that the original product was not sustainable.

PVDtoDEL

VX was one fuel spike away from bankruptcy at the time of acquisition. There's a reason the investors were so anxious to sell.

It's not hard to make profits when fuel is cheap and the interest rate is low.

dayone

And your planes are new.

PVDtoDEL

And your labor is very junior.