Southwest is a real airline because they've aggressively grown to over 700 aircraft in 50 years and take care of their pilots. When Alaska decides to actually grow by airframes and not seat count, places those planes at Alaska and not horizon/skywest, and chooses to grow instead of rely on codesharing for 'growth', then they'll be a real airline. Right now they're a glorified travel agent who sells tickets on other airlines, who happens to operate a small handful of a/c regionally in the PNW. If they could get away with it they'd ditch he planes and just sell tickets as long as it brings money in for the investors.