They may have dropped SFO-MEX, but they swapped that landing slot with an additional LAX-MEX. Althought they dropped LAX-MCO and SFO-FLL, they added frequency on SEA-ORD/BUR/BNA over the summer. LAX-LIR goes from 4x per week to daily.

Not sure where that puts us net block hours, but it wasn’t a total loss of flying.

It sounds like the company is pumping the brakes on growth for the moment, cutting weakness and adding where they are strong to show some better numbers to Wall Street.

Could be, just looking fall winter time frame on the Alaska website, I couldn’t find any routes for the 319.

I mean who am I...?
But I got an unsolicited text from the broker just today about the stock being a terrific investment. "Critically undervalued due to over-exaggerated and extremely short sighted fears... ...with a track record of high growth (it) is currently experiencing growing pains, but will emerge stronger...The current valuation leaves a lot of room for profit, with very little downside risk."

I'm in Corporate America returning to Part 121 flying after a long absence...the broker is successfully guiding Fortune 100 companies. Alaska will be fine.

Let the anonymous internet flaming begin.

Pilots may have different interests than managers. We are in it for the long haul, due to the seniority system.

Managers need to at least pay lip service to the long haul, but at heart they may have a shorter focal length.

At AS in the short/mid term, hypothetically, managers might be able to hunker down, not grow much, stay in the black, keep their jobs and bonuses. They might get crushed by vastly larger competitors in the long run (senior managers tend to be older, probably not planning on working for another 20-30 years). Bird in the hand.

Or they could go out on a leveraged limb, try to grow rapidly, acquire, merge, etc. Might be successful, or it might cost them their jobs sooner rather than later. Bird in the bush.

Reality? Probably in between.

I heard (second hand) from one of the section chiefs that interviews were over for this year. Can anyone confirm? At the NW conference in Puyallup the HR folks were saying maybe there would be some in August, the CP’s said they didn’t know. At the meet and greet at BFI in January they said there would be 400 hired this year. Are there already that many in the pool?


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Talking to a Horizon friend of mine and he has a class date in June so they are already projected out at least that far.

Also they are trying to lower the time in the pool for off the street hires so late summer interviews for Fall/Winter dates makes sense.

Yesterday B.M. mentioned in a company e-mail that Q1 they are anticipating the first quarterly loss since 2009...and SW hasn't started competing with us to Hawaii yet.

Last update I read said interviews will resume in May. Planning on 250 this year.

Thank you!


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The ANC BCP sent out a message yesterday about hiring.

Basically, he stated that ALK is going to show its first Q1 loss in 7 years. Management has decided to push certain costs down the road and slow growth by 4% for the year. This means that the aggressive hiring at the start of this year has already put us at the new goal. So, the decision has been made to suspend recruiting events and interviews until further notice... potentially for the rest of 2018. He said that he is going to hold off on meet & greets. He finished his E-Mail by saying that 9 pilots have resigned so far this year.

It would be nice for all the pilot group to get a memo on the pilot web page about the state of hiring.

Anyway, I've seen this movie before. They slow down / stop hiring and then it comes back to bite them in the a$$ later. Just watch. It will happen.