I don't fear losing pilot jobs due to higher wages in the JCBA... I fear losing pilot jobs when we lose a vast majority of the virgin America following because Alaska was too arrogant to keep some of their features and incorporate their name in someway.
Serious? I thought most of us were beyond the red KoolAid days. Features and name don't pay our bills, a nice pay raise and good JCBA will. I don't care if they paint a freakin Moose on the tail. Just pay me
The Virgin thing is overrated anyway. Branson's comments on us since the buyout have been nothing short of disappointing and it's clear he only cares about his own image and brand, the rest of us are expendable. And brand recognition didn't help any profits materialize until oil came crashing way down. It's true that Virgin was recognizable on the transcon market, but so was Alaska with its AA codeshare. Searching on Expedia or orbitz for a JfK to LAX flight, and one column would be (example) Alaska flight 6201 with a note that it's operated by AA. The exposure to a degree was already there, it was just codeshared out. Now the same flights will come up in online searches for transcon flights, except it will be AAG metal.
What's the red tail done for the last 5.5 years that was impressive? It stagnated out, stopping all original vision of it being a 100+ airline competing long term with other major airlines. It barely made a profit and only did so when oil came crashing down. At one point end of 2012, I thought I may be furloughed but luckily they didn't have to as they capped credit hrs for bid award in Jan 2013 and put many on reserve to swallow lack of block hours. Our pay has been near rock bottom, if maybe at/above Spirit and Frontier. If you take the emotion out of it these are just facts for at least my 5.5 yrs here. That's why I don't really feel any strong connection to a red tail. Go ahead and paint it over. Fact remains that of all the mergers in the US for the past 20-30 years, no two-names have survived long term. It just isn't efficient or even feasible. And airline-within-airline concepts have been tried and failed. Day one announcement of April 4th on the PDF file they had a box of info and one piece of information on it was: "Post-close corporate structure name: Alaska Airlines". Not sure why anyone would think VX even had a chance, it was fairly obvious and announced from the get-go what they envisioned.