Opening Salvo AS vs DL

[BILL LUMBERG]

That answer about Delta competing above really was a non-answer.

Management was like "don't worry minions, we know what we are doing here...you wouldn't know anything about codesharing". Yep, something is brewing.

At least that newsletter is better than the constant spin machine at work for all the SHEEPLE here at mother D.

 

[johnsonrod]

There will be no MRJs... Some more q400's and it would not surprise me if Horizon were sold off in the next 6-12 months. Something is brewing... I sure would love to see the look on the Generals face this spring! He hates it when anyone but Delta announces anything exciting or something that might result in another persons career expectations increasing. Hope 2014 is a great year for us all. It will be very interesting indeed.

How can you say that? You have limited scope protection. Clearly SkyWest is ordering the airplanes because of plans made outside of your area. They didn't buy them to start their own independent airline. Who knows if they will be used for Alaska - but it is a distinct possibility. Those MRJs will be versatile and could provide great market/feed access to SEA and PDX hubs.

 

[General Lee]

That answer about Delta competing above really was a non-answer.

Management was like "don't worry minions, we know what we are doing here...you wouldn't know anything about codesharing". Yep, something is brewing.

At least that newsletter is better than the constant spin machine at work for all the SHEEPLE here at mother D.

Wait, the headlines on the Delta net aren't true??????


Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[BILL LUMBERG]

C'mon GL....

I know you were TIC but really....the Deltanet is written for people who can't think for themselves.

I remember the press about the JAL purchase.

 

[scoreboardII]

Yes you are!
Alaska needs a relatively small International AirBus hub in HNL like it needs a hole in the head. The two operations are doing fine as smaller high quality legacies. Combining the two would would just make a small disorganized mess with incompatible fleets and incompatible business plans.

That is exactly what Frontier thought in Den.

 

[Old School 737]

October 24, 2013

Good morning!

This morning we released financial results for the third quarter. To cut to the bottom line, we earned a profit of $157 million, making this the best quarter in our 81-year history.

That is quite an accomplishment, and I want to thank you for keeping us safe, working together, keeping us on time, delivering our J.D. Power-caliber customer service, and for leading and innovating. It is incredibly gratifying to work with such talented and dedicated people!

As you know, we had much more competition in Anchorage this summer than in previous years, but we were prepared. Because of our recent growth and route diversification, other geographic regions performed well while Anchorage markets were under pressure. Hawaii, in particular, had a very strong third quarter thanks to recent schedule adjustments in our California-Hawaii markets.

I also want to thank those of you who participated in our recent employee meetings in Seattle, Los Angeles and Anchorage. The meetings were very well attended (1,500 of you showed up in Seattle!), and we had a good chance to talk about our performance, our future and your concerns.

One area that many of you asked about was our relationship with Delta. As you probably know, they?ve added flying in some of our key markets, including between Seattle and San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Anchorage. Some of you have asked why Delta is doing this and how we?re going to respond. Alliances are often complicated relationships. Sometimes we cooperate in these relationships and sometimes we compete. For example, it makes sense for us to work with Delta to connect passengers who start in our network and want to connect to their growing number of international flights. In other cases, however, we compete. Much of Delta?s recent growth is in some of our core West Coast markets. In these markets, we plan to aggressively, completely and vigorously defend what we?ve all built together. You may have seen our recent announcements to add frequencies and provide double miles (with the extra miles counting toward MVP/Gold/75k status) in these markets.

There were also several questions during the employee meetings about the status of our negotiations with our flight attendants. As we mentioned at the meetings, our goal in this contract, as it is in every contract, is to recognize the hard work and dedication of our people while ensuring the company?s continued ability to compete and prosper in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The tone at the bargaining table has been positive and I am optimistic that we?re making good progress toward a comprehensive agreement.

I was chatting with a business associate recently and he said something that really resonated with me. It was this: ?The best defense is ? performance.? This struck me as really good advice for Alaska Air Group at this moment.

Alaska and Horizon are relatively small airlines in the grand scheme of things. Combined, we represent 3.5% of the U.S. airline industry. We could debate about what makes an airline successful, but I think that, at the core, it is acting on things that are in our control ? even for a small 3.5% player. This includes putting safety first above all else and performing extremely well when it comes to on-time performance, delivering bags to the carousel on time, and providing our customers with the absolute best service in the industry from employees who are head-and-shoulders above the rest. It also includes having low fares, customer-friendly policies, low costs and excellent returns for our owners. Our Five Focus areas are an excellent road map for us all. We can control our performance in each of these areas and, as we do, we will control our destiny.

The leadership of this company is committed to doing what it takes to win. We want Alaska to thrive as an independent, Northwest-based company. We believe that?s best for you, our employees ? as well as for our customers, our communities and our owners.

At our employee meetings we introduced a new 737-900ER with our ?Employee-Powered? livery. This aircraft carries the signatures of the Alaska Airlines family and is dedicated to all of you. It's a constant reminder to me of the real power of people ? our people ? working together.

Thank you for everything you?re doing, and I look forward to seeing you out and about this fall.

Brad

Isn't the employee powered plane a -800 ??

 

[CesnaCaptn]

Isn't the employee powered plane a -800 ??

Yes. N568AS.

 

[Old School 737]

Guess we should tell Brad???

 

[eskimopilot]

No, I think you are upset that you may actually have some competition in your corner of the Country.
Bye Bye---General Lee

That's funny. My buddy at Emirates deflects the question the exact same way.

 

[Mookie]

I think both sides should be careful about getting too cocky right now.

 

[Old School 737]

It funny how all the talk of us (Alaska . Vs them etc). How will it work .. Who wants to buy us etc .. My prediction Q400 in the arctic .. ANC base is just doing allnighter long haul .. And freighters .. A Bay Area pilot base .. Poss San .. And we just keep doing what we have been doing .. Some more rj flights in there as well since smallest plane will be a -800 in a few years .. Slow steady nothing crazy here ..unless we get crazy and buy JetBlue ..

 

[flythere]

My question for the Delta Dudes, does Big Daddy Delta have a "VP" in other cities, or just Seattle? Is there a VP of say, LAX, SLC, DEN, MSP, etc.

 

[tico]

I don't think Delta cares what Alaska does.....And I don't think they consider Alaska to be competition either....They compete with SWA, United and American(usair)....In operational terms and in size, Alaska is a jet regional. Kinda like the Minnesota Vikings feeling like they compete with the Skokie North High Vikings.....Not so much..

 

[Flyby1206]

I don't think Delta cares what Alaska does.....And I don't think they consider Alaska to be competition either....They compete with SWA, United and American(usair)....In operational terms and in size, Alaska is a jet regional. Kinda like the Minnesota Vikings feeling like they compete with the Skokie North High Vikings.....Not so much..

I dunno man, the Minnesota Vikings are 1-5. I'll bet that High School team could give them a run for their money!

 

[Boxboy]

ALK is like a pimp who owns one high dollar call girl and one crack-ho. The high dollar call girl has great demand but profits from her are limited. The other pimps who operate with a great number of crack-ho's won't bother ALK as they pose no threat. But one of these days...

 

[flythere]

ALK is like a pimp who owns one high dollar call girl and one crack-ho. The high dollar call girl has great demand but profits from her are limited. The other pimps who operate with a great number of crack-ho's won't bother ALK as they pose no threat. But one of these days...

Is the crack-ho's name Ruby??

 

[General Lee]

My question for the Delta Dudes, does Big Daddy Delta have a "VP" in other cities, or just Seattle? Is there a VP of say, LAX, SLC, DEN, MSP, etc.

Usually VP of geographic sections, like VP of Asia flying, VP of Latin America, etc. But, I think there is a VP for NYC. A VP for SEA means something, like future expansion is probably likely. The VPs of those sections or cities go around and round up business contracts for that area I believe.

A FNWA Capt I just flew with explained how NWA used to deal with AK. When AK got "out of line" with the NWA codeshare, NWA would park a pax 747-200 on the SEA to ANC route and then dump the fares. Within a couple months, AK would come back apologizing. I don't know if that will happen again or is happening now, but I guess that always is an option. You just never know.....

What do I hope for? Internal expansion. I'd rather not have AK do the flying DL could do on their own. Yes, a lot of the current flights are RJs, but as 717s come online along with new 739ERs and MD90s, some of them could flow through SEA and PDX. Maybe some of the planned parkings of older 757s could be delayed? Internal growth is good, and the RJs might be testing the water as we speak? Again, you just never know....


Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[BILL LUMBERG]

There is a VP of NYC. I actually saw rampers run into position the other day.

They are doing something right there.

 

[igneousy2]

It funny how all the talk of us (Alaska . Vs them etc). How will it work .. Who wants to buy us etc .. My prediction Q400 in the arctic .. ANC base is just doing allnighter long haul .. And freighters .. A Bay Area pilot base .. Poss San .. And we just keep doing what we have been doing .. Some more rj flights in there as well since smallest plane will be a -800 in a few years .. Slow steady nothing crazy here ..unless we get crazy and buy JetBlue ..

Here's my prediction for 2018 for Alaska.

Q400's have come and gone from the arctic. They are going to try to run the Q400 with the freighter back-up and it will fail for all the reasons all the front line employees know that it will (even Eskimos like to arrive at their destination airport at the same time as their bags). Brad and company will be able to tell the employees that they tried everything to keep it within Air group. Since the only 737-400's left at Alaska will be the freighters/combis, it won't make sense to anyone for Alaska to continue to operate them, so NAC will be the new "code-share" partner and bring combi-service back to the arctic. Alaska will be rid of the Arctic flying, the Q400's will be out of Alaska, 737 combi service will return (operated by NAC)...everybody will be happy. Don't worry guys...it's just 5 airplanes.

As far as down south, Delta will have matched capacity in SEA-LAX, SEA-SFO, SEA-LAS. Hopefully, SEA-ANC doesn't have enough international connections to be of interest to them. Delta is committing several billion dollars of capital to build up SEA. It would be foolish to rely heavily on an outside vendor to provide the feed necessary to make this capital investment profitable...so of course they are going to be putting a lot of their own metal in SEA. These recent Delta adds are just the beginning. Talking to guys at Alaska, most don't seem to appreciate just how much bigger Delta is then AS. The funniest is...Delta can't afford to buy Alaska! Delta doesn't need to buy Alaska, if Delta increases their revenue 10%...they just created Alaska Airlines. By 2018, Delta Airlines will have more 737's then Alaska does.

100ish seat RJ announcement by the end of next year.

Hawaii flying will be scaled back to the hubs once HA deploys their NEO's...so probably not 5 years...but 10 years from now I don't believe AS will be flying from the bay area to Hawaii. Definitely not close to the current rate.

 

[RNP.15]

Here's my prediction for 2018 for Alaska.

Q400's have come and gone from the arctic. They are going to try to run the Q400 with the freighter back-up and it will fail for all the reasons all the front line employees know that it will (even Eskimos like to arrive at their destination airport at the same time as their bags). Brad and company will be able to tell the employees that they tried everything to keep it within Air group. Since the only 737-400's left at Alaska will be the freighters/combis, it won't make sense to anyone for Alaska to continue to operate them, so NAC will be the new "code-share" partner and bring combi-service back to the arctic. Alaska will be rid of the Arctic flying, the Q400's will be out of Alaska, 737 combi service will return (operated by NAC)...everybody will be happy. Don't worry guys...it's just 5 airplanes.

As far as down south, Delta will have matched capacity in SEA-LAX, SEA-SFO, SEA-LAS. Hopefully, SEA-ANC doesn't have enough international connections to be of interest to them. Delta is committing several billion dollars of capital to build up SEA. It would be foolish to rely heavily on an outside vendor to provide the feed necessary to make this capital investment profitable...so of course they are going to be putting a lot of their own metal in SEA. These recent Delta adds are just the beginning. Talking to guys at Alaska, most don't seem to appreciate just how much bigger Delta is then AS. The funniest is...Delta can't afford to buy Alaska! Delta doesn't need to buy Alaska, if Delta increases their revenue 10%...they just created Alaska Airlines. By 2018, Delta Airlines will have more 737's then Alaska does.

100ish seat RJ announcement by the end of next year.


Hawaii flying will be scaled back to the hubs once HA deploys their NEO's...so probably not 5 years...but 10 years from now I don't believe AS will be flying from the bay area to Hawaii. Definitely not close to the current rate.[/QUOTE

Maybe anything is possible, but I don't see this happening.