Originally Posted by
beancounter
It's all interlinked. Why do you think Alaska Air Group would obscenely over pay for VX? It's to make Alaska less vulnerable to Delta's long term Seattle plans.
Ironically if Alaska Air Group would have just agreed to guarantee Delta the feed it needed via code share to build a Far East hub out of Seattle, they'd probably have grown by 30% over the last few years as Delta became increasingly reliant on AK's feed. Instead they said shove off and the race is on to build a hub suitable to feed international from SEA. Probably works for mgmt's interest, but the pilots.... time will tell.