Yeah, fair enough. I don't work for AS, but I jumpseat with ya'll regularly and I guess I appreciate it from a different perspective. I also spent part of my childhood in a military family living in Alaska (Elmendorf/Anchorage) and flew your milk run route down through the panhandle to SEA once or twice a year on family vacations as a teen, so I admit my appreciation of your brand and all that you do for the people in small town/remote/rural Alaska is based on this. I understand where you're coming from, though I do genuinely think it would be a shame for the people of the state of Alaska if your brand and services are diminished there because I've seen how much they rely on you.

B6 is definitely not spread out. Something like 75% of their pilots are based in NYC or BOS, and most of their flights touch NYC/BOS. And as for alliances, B6 is neck deep in the North Eastern Alliance and has a ton of various codeshares—not the same as being OW/SA/ST, but still a potential issue, especially wrt the NEA. And B6 isn’t all Airbus. There are still 60 E190s, with 30 exiting the fleet between 2023-2026, and no end in sight right now for the other 30. And an order book of 70 A220s with 50 options which will likely be exercised sooner rather than later. So, it’d be quite a fleet mix with G4’s CFM powered buses, LEAP powered MAXes, and the whole slew of airframe/engine combos B6 has. But, who knows.

If Alaska we’re to ever buy/merge with Sun Country that MSP base would last about as long as JFK did. I doubt anything happens in the near term at Alaska.

Closing MSP to SCY would be like closing SEA to ASA. They're all locals who picked that airline for the drive to work.
You'd lose half, and the other half would be in open revolt.

Probably true, Alaska management could care less though. To them everyone wants to live n the Pacific Northwest.

I agree with some of what you've said here. I said JB is more spread out, I didn't say it was the equivalent of the Big 4. By "more" spread out, I'm comparing it to AS. JB is definitely focused on the east coast, but at least it has an operating base on the west coast. AS is only on one side of the country, so it's all relative, and that's still a huge difference. As far as alliances, I was referring to OW/SA/ST, which is more messy and complex to get in/out of than some codeshares and regional alliances. As far as fleets, JB's plan is to eventually retire all of its E190's, half of which will be gone in the next few years as you point out, and the long term plan is to be an all airbus fleet. Additionally, in the next few years B6 will have over 300 airbus airframes and less than 30 E190's, so that sub fleet will represent less than 10% of their overall aircraft, which is about as significant a presence as Alaska's 321's despite being "Proudly All Boeing". Like you said, who knows.

Yeah I don't disagree, which is why I questioned if they would be there long term or not. I expect they'd buy SY for some of the same reasons they bought VX - to stay relevant, but in this case, also, for the extra airframes, for the Amazon Air flying, and certainly AS would cannibalize some of the routes and keep some. SY has some routes that would fit nicely in the AS structure since they're a sun and sand airline that do serve more than just MSP, including their presence in Las Vegas and west coast-Mexico/Hawaii in general. I could see AS trying to make a go of turning SY's operations in Vegas into a base or at least more of a focus city (SAN style), which would fit in with their existing west coast structure.

The biggest thing here is I think AS management wants to stay relevant but I don't think it wants any kind of M&A that threatens its existence/power status or would be too messy or complex for them. SY has less than 500 pilots, 50ish 737's, some west coast presence that could be absorbed, and (I think) some attractive Amazon Air flying. I think it can't be understated how attractive the Amazon flying could be for AS management - it gets them a foot in the door with a local cross town company that is one of the largest and wealthiest corporations in the world, diversifies their revenue stream more and allows them to build on the existing freight/cargo operations you already do in Alaska. All of this seems much more palatable to Angle Lake than merging with Jet Blue or Allegiant given their recent history.

That "All Airbus" fleet still comes with different aircraft types, sims, parts, and almost none of the cost savings of a true single type fleet. It's really an all Airbus 320 and Bombardier CSeries A220 fleet.

As to the Amazon flying... I have a hard time believing this management didn't initially put a bid in for the Amazon flying SY got, but either we were too expensive or Amazon's requirements were unappetizing to management at the time. To chase something like that through a merger seems silly.

But I think your comments on management's hubris is SPOT ON.

I’m calling it , breezybois and jb will merge. Neeleman wants his baby back.

What does B6 have to gain from that?