Let's just say that new Delta One Lounge had better be more than just a Boston-style dining shack in a back room.

My guess for what happens? It's easy: Delta folds, eventually. The whole backbone of the SEA hub is international flying, and Alaska is going to bring hometown loyalty, a better alliance and a lot of investment to the area. Meanwhile, Delta has been phoning it in in Seattle for the last three years - the SkyClub catering has become rock-bottom terrible, worse than MSP, SLC or LAX, and they've frankly just stopped trying since the start of the pandemic. And the KE partnership - and KE now becoming a powerhouse with the OZ acquisition - makes SEA-Asia much less necessary than it was when they embarked on this adventure in the beginning.

My prediction is Delta will cling on through the end of the decade, but we'll see a slow retreat to a lighter schedule and a companion hub out of SLC where they can get higher yields and focus on connecting passengers. SEA will still have DL international flights, but fewer, and we'll especially see many of the second tier domestic routes slowly evaporate unless they're individually profitable.

It's going to take AS about three years to get the ball rolling here. I imagine they'll be behind in lounge product until 2027 or so, because the S rebuild won't start until after the World Cup is finished; perhaps they can work out a deal to take over the old SkyClub there in the interim, though? And they need to take delivery of the premium-equipped 787s that are on order and work out a refit plan for the 330s; until then, Delta will easily win on seating.

We will likely see a short term spike as Delta matches every new route Alaska adds trying to tank their yields, along with a bunch of competitive promos. I'm guessing we'll also see the new flatbed A321neos on transcons for a few years to combat the situation where AS is about to be flying widebody flatbeds while DL flies 321neo torture chambers.

But in the long run, my money is on Alaska winning. For AS, this is do or die; for DL, they have the luxury of ignoring Seattle and eventually deciding to reallocate their resources elsewhere if they don't win quickly. SEA's never been particularly lucrative, and this is only going to make the situation worse.

I made MVP Gold organically this year and honestly wish I'd pushed for 75K. It's going to be a bright future with the Eskimo.

I believe everything in SEA is common use, and the Port has a blanket rule that allows them to kick out even an incumbent carrier at one of their preferential use gates if it means more international service. Alaska should have no problem kicking Delta out of the gates they're squatting on for short haul domestic ops there if they're adding new international service.

The gates are leased. Common use means multiple airlines use one gate at the discretion of the airports management. That’s definitely not the case at SEA. Additionally, airports may have a say in gate utilization rates and hence allocation, but they don’t get to say in what routes are acceptable for general gate utilization.

If it went the way you’re proposing there would be decades of lawsuits, similar to what you see at LUV re allocation.

Finally: Yall need to think about airframe count. Hawaiian has 30 A330 and will have 12 787 by the end of 2030. Most European destinations could be served by one airframe with whatever backup ratio they need for maintenance. Asian destinations require more than one airframe since even ICN has an 11-hour block time. There will need to be a major airframe purchase, flights will be less than daily, or the plan will be scaled back. (The only relevance here to DL is that AS’s announcement may be more hype than reality).

I suspect DL just retains status quo. Maybe one or two DL TPAC routes get added over the next decade, probably in retaliation to AS or another carrier adding something like SEA-SIN/MNL/etc., but I think DL’s operation at SEA is mostly matured. And that’s ok.

SEA is a big enough market to serve both AS and DL hubs, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. AS will probably remain larger, but I don’t see DL going away.

There's definitely been a lot of hype this week. Some people have been talking about AS potentially redeploying the HA A330-200s on transcon as a game changer. In reality, they are dense people movers with very few premium seats (only 18 business class seats, with a whopping 260 Y seats). And until they are retrofitted, the business class seats have a pretty mediocre hard product- 2 x 2 x 2 configuration and oddly, they don't even have in seat IFE (even though the Y seats do... how that decision was made is baffling).

AS may have loyal following, but that is all domestic/short haul International. This doesn't necessarily translate to success flying long haul International. Something that is brand new for AS leadership.

I think DL has little to worry about short term. (Say till 2030) Long term there's too many variables, it could easily go either direction. AS has never offered the best product, but at least a consistent product that was always good enough.

AS is not even close to Delta in profits. Its margins are however close. The combined AS and HA balance sheet will not at least initially be nearly as strong and margins will be lower.

From the moment the merger closed, I have thought AS would "de-hub" HNL, with regard to the routes to Asia and Australia.
When the DOT approved the merger, they said nothing about preserving international traffic to/from Hawaii. Their only warnings were intra-state, and from west coast to Hawaii, and AS can easily fulfill those requirements with the 321's and some AS 737 Max painted in HA livery.
HA with AS now has partnerships with QF and JL. Japan to Hawaii traffic is down and they have competition there from JL, ANA and DL from HND/NRT.
To Australia they have competition from JetStar as well.
Probably no loss to drop AKL if not wildly profitable and use those frames in SEA.
The rest of HA's existing Pacific island destinations are reachable with 321 or MAX.
HA already dropped AUS and will likely drop JFK and BOS which are widebody requiring routes.

By 2030, HNL will probably just have widebody flights to HND and maybe SYD if AS wants to keep a vanity flagship flight that runs LHR-SEA-HNL-SYD. The SEA-SYD great circle maps directly over HNL so it would still be a faster route than via SFO or LAX from SEA.

A surprising number of those widebody frames will be available for AS to do what they wish from SEA and they can have an Asia and EU network that rivals Northwest circa 2007 (minus the NRT hub).

Starting International service isnt a snap the fingers type deal. Neither is moving routes from HNL to SEA absent an OPEN SKIES type agreement . Also add in AS executives are the ones in charge (meaning zero long-haul International experience), highly doubtful they rival pm-NW anytime soon.

I have a feeling we'll see a gradual stagnation of DL growth in SEA while AS continuously expands, similar to what happened between AA and UA in ORD.

ORD isn’t really a good comparison, because AA typically runs from any competition, whereas DL has shown in the past that they can be in it for the long haul. (I.e look at where they were in NY 15-20 years ago vs today.) Now of course, whether they decide to do so in SEA will be TBD

HA has long-haul experience and existing operations in ICN and NRT, so that is why these destinations were chosen for SEA routes.
Also, OZ will be absorbed into KE and we will see how much the Korean government wants to maintain competition to ICN, so AS is simply taking a verbal seat at the table to see what is served.
Then plan B for AS if they cut and run from their TPAC experiment from SEA is to let the 332 leases expire, or convert to freighters and fly and maintain them like they are doing now with the HA 333's.
AS was pretty quick to retreat when things went bad after the VX merger and this history alone is why DL should stand its ground and just continue to complete in SEA.
Either way, HNL is getting largely de-hubbed for Asia and Australia service over the next 5 years.

AS has traditionally done well within their niche, which is as a regional West Coast + Alaska player who also flies from the West Coast to warm weather vacation destinations. But after they bought VX to keep it away from B6, they didn't really know what to do with it, got rid of the inflight hard product that differentiated VX, and largely dismantled much of VX's network. (Acknowledging that VX was not profitable.) AS has a lot of work to do with their in-flight hard product and ground service (i.e. lounges) to turn into a national competitor.

The other important consideration is that AS is more likely to rely on O&D traffic from SEA than DL. DL is able to pump multiple frequencies through from all over the east, whereas AS typically flies only 1-2x from each city east of the Mississippi.

And for Mountain West connection traffic where AS is strong to SEA, DL's new SLC to ICN flight will have a 3 month head start vs the AS SEA-ICN route.
SLC-ICN might be a bigger headwind for AS's SEA-ICN aspirations than the AS executives think.