Originally Posted by
RippinClapBombs
The glass houses remark was spot on. AAL produced 14.9B in revenue—Alaska 3.3B. Alaska holds 7B in debt and nearly matches AALs revenue to debt ratio.
Alaska held .68B at the end of 2015. 10 years later after 2 acquisitions (something American also went through) you’ve 10X your total debt—.68B to 6.9B.
FYI at the end of 2021 AAL held 46B in debt with a mainline fleet of 865 mainline A/C. Today 35B with a total fleet of 1,025. That equates to a 30% reduction in debt while simultaneously growing the total fleet by 20%.
Also, both United and Delta have been aggressively growing in the PNW by adding more available seats in SEA/SFO—Alaska’s highest revenue producing hubs. I wouldn’t be surprised if Alaska eventually found themselves in the same position as JetBlue.
I disagree about the Pacific Northwest. Alaska is really built up Portland now and if you look at the seat seats in Seattle from 2015 to now, Delta stayed at about 20% and we’ve grown to just under 60%, including horizon Skywest in Alaska the Pacific Northwest is definitely the moat.
JetBlue’s in a bad spot cause they never had a fortress hub they’re under yield pressure in Boston and JFK and we’re competing with spirit in Fort Lauderdale, although that may become their biggest moat if spirit folds. Seattle, it does seem like Alaska. Has lockdown due to Delta being unable to grow seat share since 2015. During Covid, the door was wide open in Portland, but we just got lucky that Delta never made a play for Portland and that we’ve built it up in our now parking planes at the D gates in Portland, but Portland pure luck that Delta stayed out during the five years after Covid, where it was not built up