baseball

Is it too late to buy Alaska?

Andy

I'm very skeptical of that ever happening. UAL can pick up additional Airbii through other sources at prices more favorable than buying F9. From my understanding, UAL can pick up additional Airbii through the same lessor that they're getting most of the China Southern 319s.

As far as I know, Airbus training isn't going to be an issue when the China Southern planes arrive and they can always contract out time from other facilities.

So I don't see training pilots as a problem.

I do expect most of the new 319s to be based in DEN to replace regional flying so your comment about Airbii and DEN has some merit.

Beyond the basic stuff above, you've got regulatory approval, integration of another company, and public relations issues to consider.

Regulatory: what percentage of DEN traffic would UAL + F9 be? 43% + 12.2%. (2016 numbers) You really think that will get by regulators?

Integration: After witnessing promised CAL/UAL synergies vaporize, do you think that shareholders and senior management would be excited about another merger?


Public Relations: There was a time when F9 was beloved by Denverites - to the point where they called F9 'Denver's hometown airline' (see paragraph 3 in the link below) during UAL's dark days. They were the favorite airline of many I knew in Denver.

That love for F9's long gone and shifted to Southwest. Today, it appears to me that United's moved up a bit in popularity, able to compete with Southwest. Airlines: Frontier became the airline we love to hate a little bit less in 2015 ? The Denver Post

If United were to buy out F9, I can almost guarantee that we'd be vilified by many in Denver. On this front, I think the risks far outweigh the benefits.

Flubber

I wonder how soon Virgin America's 'Bus fleet will be on the market?

svergin

Probably in a few years. The great thing is that we would be able to grab all those airframes on leases (probably get a deal on them too) and AS is going to absorb all the pilots. They did us a favor by buying VX. And for only $4B. What a deal.

Andy

I'm not going to bother making sure I've got the exact numbers, but they've got ~61 aircraft in their fleet. I think they've got a couple hitting the end of their leases before the end of 2017. I'm pretty sure they're 319s and unlikely to be renewed, even before the Alaska buyout.

I'll be curious to see Alaska's long term fleet plans, but Boeing seems to be currently selling 737s for very competitive prices.

WhatNow

At Delta the 737-800 is a better performer out of SLC then the A320. The bus is often load restricted on a hot day. Denver is higher!

Grumble

Uh, I'll call BS. Having flown both airplanes the guppy is an absolute pig hot and high and heavy. DALs bus fleet has CFMs to boot. The only time I've ever been weight restricted was due to short flight, Max pax/cargo load, and we needed more gas for an alternate which put us over max landing weight. Didn't kick anyone off either, left some cargo behind for next flight.

I can't count how many west bound pax we had kicked off the guppy my first few years on it (record was 20 going EWR to DEN in June because of one icing airmet). Chalk up several west bound transcon fuel stops too.

cadetdrivr

Yup. I'm pretty sure one of the key reasons UAL selected V2500s for the bus back in the day was for DEN.

Spicy McHaggis

The internet would be a barren, desolate void if that happened.

Airhoss

True dat^^^^^^