Originally Posted by
rickair7777
AS is too small to get away with that long term.
You can probably sustain a niche business model, catering to specific customer demographics (ULCC, biz travel, vacation travel). But the days of niche regional legacies are over, too many 800 pound gorillas ready to eat your lunch.
HAL might be the only sustainable example because of their unique geography and brand (assuming they survive this).
Eventually AS is going to have to responsibly team up with somebody. They essentially spent $4B to keep JB out of the west coast... how often can they do that sort of move going forward?
Will be interesting to see if the OneWorld alliance gets much business for ALK in the long run. With the alliance they get American, British Airways, Japan Airlines, and Qantas as partners to name a few. There is also a disadvantage to the 800 pound gorillas. Really hard to make radical changes with all the fleet types. Southwest has the advantage of a single fleet and I personally think that ALK is headed that way. I do thing they need some "clarity" both on the MAX and on business demand to make a decision on the fleet which they don't have right now.