Originally Posted by 2loud

Y'all got a huge windfall and jackpot, all rolled up in one! Branson and the BOD decided to sell VX because it couldn't turn a profit. The big three had zero interest in dancing with VX. Six or so airbuses with the rest leased and just a few gates in SFO, LAX, and JFK is less than ideal even for a start up airline. Thank your lucky stars that jetBlue wanted to dance with y'all which forced Alaskan to show up to the trailer park pool party. jetBlue couldn't hang so they had to leave the party and Alaskan got suckered into hooking up with the undesirable date. Had jetBlue not started a bidding war y'all would have been acquired by an investment company and gone the way of Aloha or best case, doing the limbo dance with Frontier. Let's not kid yourselves.

Y'all talk about getting a contract had VX stayed independent is beyond naive. jetBlue has been in negotiations for how long now? VX pilot group didn't even have a contract/baseline and being unprofitable as VX was, your pilot group would have been in negotiations for a very long time and eventually would have bled out. Do y'all think that you could have scored a 43%/37%+ pay raise on your own? How about a 15% 401K? Most definitely not. Just look at the likes of jetBlue or better yet Spirit, a profitable airline with a much superior business model than VX, who not too long ago settled on a contract. Could Alaskan have scored the current arbitrated pay raise on its own without too much effort? You betcha. Was it not the arbitrator who awarded the pay rates in the JCBA? If anything, the awarded pay rates were lower than what Alaskan could have gotten in arbitration had VX not been a part of the equation. The bottom line is, VX piggy backed on Alaskan and got a huge windfall.

When the SLI is finalized, the VX pilot group will once again get a huge windfall and Alaskan boys 'n girls will be left holding the bag. It's common knowledge that VX wasn't a career airline and Alaskan may not appear to be very attractive in its current form mainly due to less than desirable schedules and work rules but it offers a far better career than VX ever could.