Originally Posted by
rickair7777
That's a good question, and I think the answer is complicated.
I think AS has some ties with Boeing. It is opaque to us peons what the exact nature of that it is, but I think other airline managers have a better idea.
There are corporate raiders who buy up unbalanced companies just to liquidate and sell off the parts. But that's not something you can do with any large airline in this era... too big to fail is also too big to get severely disrupted. So while AS might have a pile of cash, that's not really going to be of any value to raiders... they would need the cash to operate the airline, which is something they don't know how to do and don't want to do.
Airlines are quasi-public utilities in this era... you can own it but there limits as to what you can do with it.
When another airline buys an airline, it always seems to be pre-coordinated with large investors and BoD. You're not likely to be buying retail shares on the open market, you just get some larger investors to sell enough large blocks to shift control. That will normally still be at a premium, but it's negotiated in advance, not a bidding frenzy on the NYSE.
Trying to do an uncoordinated hostile takeover doesn't seem to be common with airlines in this era.
Thank you for the educational answer. I’ve said for a while that in 10-15 years Alaska will be the #3 legacy, not American. I’m just a dumb ex accountant/pilot, but my guess is either through a merger with JetBlue or an acquisition of American where Alaska is the surviving management team and culture.
On a side note do you know anything about Nat Pieper? An American pilot said he was at a company function where he spoke. He said he was the first executive at American, since Crandal, that he heard speaking that didn’t sound like a complete moron.