I agree with most of what you are saying. The Alaska problem does need to be looked at, since we have left markets that they mysteriously started just afterwards. Alaska Airlines move into Hawaii wasn't brought upon by us, rather by Mexican gang cartels. Before Alaska flew to Hawaii, their major deal in the Winter was flying people from AK, the NW USA, and California to Mexican resorts. PVR, Mazatlan, Ixtapa, Cancun, Manzanillo, Cabo, etc. They flew there a lot from all over the Bay Area, San Diego, and had a pretty good sized base at LAX that had service to each resort city multiple times per day. Then came the Cartel Wars, and Alaska had to figure out what to do with their planes. They moved a lot around, dumping 737-200s in ANC, moving some 734s up there away from the lower 48, but still getting new 738s. So, they went for Hawaii, actually offering daytime service both ways to the West Coast, which people prefer instead of allnighters that screw with hotel checkout times. It turned into a hit, and they have continued to expand on that plan. In the meantime, they are still a successful company, had good hedges, high stock price, and are still getting more planes. Where should they put them? They recently started SEA to STL and AUS once a day. That's a stretch, and it seems like they are running out of places and ideas, but some other Hawaii routes may materialize, but unfortunately we need to be more proactive in coming up with interesting point to point Hawaii service. But, I don't think that is in the works, we tend to stick to the hub and spoke method. So what can we do about Alaska? They are successful, well funded, and have planes coming in with limited options on where they can go from SEA and PDX. They used to fly PDX to MCO on a redeye, which was cancelled. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.