When is it cheapest to fly to alaska
What if Alaska Merged with JetBlue?
hey everyone i hope that you were doing
good today we're going to be taking an
inside a deep look at a potential merger
between alaska airlines and jetblue
airways we're going to see how it can
play out
and just as a reminder this is just an
idea it's not really happening
at this point let's face it both
airlines have several strategies
that are similar and can be easily
integrated
and it seems that if any merger were to
appear this would be
by far the most likely the last merger
we saw in the u.s
did actually see a connection between
alaska and
jetblue as both carriers sought to
absorb virgin america
in the end alaska airlines ended up
winning
and the deal to take over virgin
america's fleet and network
which were mostly concentrated at sfo or
san francisco airport
were taken over successfully by alaska
airlines i would just like to take a
second here and thank christopher
morningstar
for the excellent work for this video
this one was tough
but the research will go a long way
virgin america operated its last flight
on the eve of april 24th
the merger which was worth over 2.6
billion
in us dollars was completed at this
point as virgin america ceased
operations and was fully incorporated
by the alaska airlines brand the
takeover initially
was attractive for both carriers because
they both wanted to expand their
presence
on the west coast now two years later
comes this video a fun video
exploring the potential of these two
airlines
combining this merger would create a
much larger airline although not as
large
as the traditional legacy carriers of
american
delta and united fleet size wise it
would make it america's fifth largest
airline
behind southwest and really america's
fourth
legacy airline although there are still
different factors of this
idea and if the airlines were to join
forces at any point in the near future
then they would still have some
significant differences when compared to
these airlines
but despite the differences it's still
important to point out all of the
important similarities
that alaska and jetblue share when
alaska committed to taking over virgin
america
the first thing we learned was that they
were willing to sacrifice
their simple boeing-only mainline fleet
virgin america only had
airbus aircraft which included older
a319 teams and 20s
while also having recently received
their first four
a321 neos alaska committed themselves to
all 67
existing aircraft including the
remainder of the
10 a-21 neo and 38-20 neo order
as of august 29 2020 alaska has
318 aircraft in its mainline fleet
with 62 outstanding orders by comparison
jebel has a slightly smaller fleet with
268 aircraft
but they have a lot more orders with 144
this would make their fleet bigger in
the long term but not necessarily
as alaska may order more aircraft in the
future and
jetblue plans in retiring all of its 60
e190s in the next five years
or by 2025. they will replace them with
the a220 300
which is the largest variant of the a220
program which has an astonishing
40 more seats at 140
versus 100 on the e190 with both fleet
and orders combined
the fleet would be a whopping 586
aircraft
with 206 orders don't forget that
jetblue is looking to go across the
transatlantic
as early as next year with their new
a321lrs
this is not even something that alaska
airlines has their intentions on
while multiple fleet types does
complicate the overall fleet strategy
the jetblue a220 could replace some
markets that alaska serves on the west
coast
with aircraft such as the e-175 they can
also offer new service
transcontinentally i don't even know if
that's a word
with the a220 or replace other aircraft
like the 737
as the a220 may better suit to the real
demand the same thing applies with
alaska 737s
on service on the east coast to and from
florida
to new york and boston and other cities
that's because
jetblue's 8-21 mint product can replace
alaska's
737 flights transcontinentally i said it
again
this would definitely make them have a
strong competitive edge
against the legacy airlines the mints
project is popular and
people like it and it's truly unique to
jetblue with their low-cost model
although in my opinion jetblue kind of
has a model of their own
another aspect is how it will impact the
employees
of both airlines once a merger comes
into play
alaska airlines employees are
represented by afa
or the association of flight attendants
while the jetblue flight attendants
voted recently in 2018
to become represented by the transport
workers union
jetblue flight attendants would have to
merge their union over to alaska
while ground personnel gay agents and
clerical employees
on the ground are represented with the
international machinists and aerospace
workers
many of jetblue's ground personnel minus
above the wing
are contracted if this remains then they
will still
not be represented but this can change
for those who
are i went through all of this because
it's important to think about
who will be taking over who one airline
in a given airline merger will not
survive such as the virgin america
merger or with delta and
northwest when that was all said and
done by january of 2010
both airlines have a combined market
capitalization value
of 7.75 billion dollars of this amount
4.662 billion belongs to alaska
airlines wildly smaller 3.097 billion
is applied to jetblue airways so this
clearly shows
that fleet size or available seat
capacity is not the only metric used
to compare when one airline takes over
another
this can get quite complex but if you
were to assume the airline with a higher
value
should take over the other one this
would mean that alaska airlines would be
taking over
jetblue here we're just making
assumptions of course
this is not always the case for example
the 2010 merger between united airlines
and continental
airlines formally created a company
known as
united and continental airline holdings
incorporated today it's simply known as
united airlines holdings for our basic
example with alaska airlines
a marketing problem can occur that's
because of the alaska airlines name
this name may not be best suited across
the country
for marketing purposes at least not in
the continental united states
for domestic flights in alaska and
perhaps also in the western coast
of the united states as alaska is
already well established there it could
work
but let's say you're going on a flight
from boston into orlando
it may not make a lot of sense if you're
saying that you're flying with alaska
airlines of course
this is just my own opinion but i think
that there's a strong perspective
that could come into play here another
big problem with this merger however is
something called the barbell effect
this occurs when an airline incorporates
another airline
that has hubs and or focus cities on the
opposite side of the country
with no hubs in the middle for smaller
countries like germany
this is far less of an issue but this is
a major concern
for the united states where the
population concentration is
more spread out and just the current
condition of airline economics with
connection opportunities
in general favor having one or more
established hubs further away from the
major cities on the coast
delta southwest american and united
practice this
and have for many years part of the
reason why
u.s airways had to merge with american
airlines is because of the barbell
effect
as they only had hubs in phoenix
philadelphia charlotte and washington
national
following the america west airlines
merger in 2005.
jetblue is strong on the east coast with
focus cities in new york city
boston fort lauderdale and orlando while
alaska has its main hub in seattle
followed by portland san francisco los
angeles and anchorage they also have
focus cities in san jose and
san diego don't forget that jetblue
airways is also interested in expanding
los angeles even further
as they have big expansion plans already
this year this effect can be alleviated
however with a co-chair with american
airlines and this is already present at
both airlines
alaska airlines already has a co-chair
agreement with american airlines
that has been in place for years while
jetblue announced just this summer in
2020
that they are re-establishing links with
american airlines with the primary focus
being on the northeastern
united states this makes it a lot more
sense for these airlines to merge
american airlines has a great role to
play here the co-chair agreement
alleviates
the barbell effect through americans
hubs in chicago and dallas
and to less of a degree charlotte which
is a little closer of course to the
eastern coast on the atlantic ocean
these hubs where american dominates yes
i know that united has a hub in chicago
can incorporate the strategies of these
airlines
much better if they were to combine it
also means that alaska airlines one
world membership will be even more
valued they aren't a part of one world
yet
that's gonna happen it's expected to
happen before the end of 2020. even
though american delta and united are all
a part of separate alliances
it wouldn't make sense for this new
merger deal
to not have the same access to one of
the alliances
from a carrier such as american it will
also give them access to the joint
business agreement
that american has with the iag group
alaska could become a fully enclosed
member
of this lucrative group as well but they
would need governmental approval
american can also benefit from this
merger by focusing more again
on rebuilding its jfk hub this is
already happening
as they announced that they would fly
into tel aviv and often in
greece next year in 2021 although no
dates or flights or schedules
are confirmed when i was producing this
video while
american rebuilds jfk or potentially
rebuilds jfk
alaska airlines the surviving airline
can still fly transatlantic routes
through jetblue's original intent
with the age of 21lrs from point to
point
routes or from boston and the focus here
would be on those types of routes as
well as more leisure markets
while american tackles really the
business demand and the larger
markets with their bigger planes one
final frontier to consider
is not for flights across the atlantic
but the pacific
of course this might be a pipe dream
actually it was an idea considered by
christopher morningstar who gave an
impressive overview of
this scenario the prospects of opening
an international hub at anchorage
of course has disadvantages as well as
advantages
one advantage is how flight times are
split more evenly the former wow hub in
iceland for example
split the european flying into two more
equal
segments this can certainly be an
advantage and
anchored northern geographical location
is how it works
that's also because the a321lr or
a321xlr
has the ability to fly from anchorage to
asian markets you know such as beijing
hong kong or tokyo or at least it's
expected to
and the a321lr or xlr makes
a lot more sense because let's face it
it's not going to work with a large
aircraft such as the triple 7 or perhaps
even
a 787 there's just not going to be
enough demand for that the main
disadvantage here is that it really
solely relies on connecting traffic only
but it provides travelers
with another option that perhaps can be
cheaper
than flights such as detroit to shanghai
those flights can get crazy expensive
from the legacy airlines otherwise
passengers have to connect in either
seattle san francisco or los angeles
on the west coast to go to these major
asian markets
and with this idea of the a321 they can
even open up
perhaps some smaller markets as well as
long as
these markets develop one final note is
that don't forget anchorage airport
already
has an 8-gate international concourse
it's been used by international airlines
in the past
such as icelander and condor they've
been using it for years
and actually the last time that i looked
on google maps
to confirm how many gates that they have
i saw an icelander 757 there
so i hope that this video gave you some
good insight on what a potential merger
between
alaska airlines and general airways
could look like leave your thoughts and
comments below on what you think about
this
and otherwise take care of each other
and
that's goodbye for me
