Originally Posted by
Outdoors
What you guys are missing is when they say “growth” per the q3 conference call found here
https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-t...-call-tra.aspx
Is that they literally state on page 12/39 that “place an aircraft order that would fund growth and allow us to retire smaller less efficient aircraft which would improve both our ability to generate additional revenue and lower unit costs.”
Your growth will be see you later A319,320,737-800 here fly this max9 instead for the same rate.
Also regarding near term growth Brad states “organic growth and merger/acquisition” (p32/39).
Reference the seniority list off today’s bid, place has supposedly hired 300 this year and the seniority list hasn’t even grown by a hundred!
Interesting. It does seem like the door is open for M&A judging by his comments:
Joseph DeNardi -- Stifel -- Analyst
Got it. That's helpful. And then Brad I try and ask you this question every now and then, I'll ask it again. Just given your experience to-date with the Virgin transaction and turning that deal into value for shareholders, how successful do you think you've been and kind of in the context of your balance sheet, nearing a point where you'd be in a position to do something. Does M&A look more or less appealing now than it did before the Virgin deal? Thank you.
Brad Tilden -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks very much, Joe. Yes, thanks for giving us a chance to talk about this. We, at that time -- if you go back to when we considered this, it was when we announced it was April, 2016. I think we felt like, we had an amazing economic engine, a great brand. We're really proud of our culture in the way people take care of customers, we felt really positive about the long-term prospects for the industry.
But, we did feel like industry conditions were such that we just needed more real estate, and we wanted to have strength beyond Alaska, Seattle and Portland. So, that was the idea behind the Virgin merger. It, as you guys know, you go through life, you learn stuff. When you do stuff, you learn stuff and it was -- it was a lot of work.
But, I think everyone here is feeling optimistic, we're feeling good that we're getting through it, and I think we really feel that we have materially enhanced sort of the cash producing sort of capability of this economic engine. We've enhanced career of security for our people in doing that. As you mentioned, I'm extraordinarily proud that we borrowed $2 billion to do it.
You guys know, our people did it with no investment banks with no, nothing like that, they just went to the banks and borrowed $2 billion on their own and we're going to pay three quarters of it off, in three months' time, so we're really proud of the team. As we look at doing more, you know I just think, my own view of the world is it's a combination of organic growth and M&A.
We've done amazing with organic growth. I'll just tell you -- and different people around this table may feel differently. But, as I look at the next few years, I sort of see the biggest opportunity us growing organically, pushing -- taking what we are proud of what we feel like we do well, and pushing it organically into markets where we're already strong.