Articles tagged “alaska airlines”

Nothing refocuses airline executives like rising fuel prices. If they continue to creep up, expect airlines to cancel more marginal routes.

Alaska Airlines is turning to basic economy fares to help drive additional revenue. But, hey, at least flyers will be assigned a seat when they book one of these fares, easing some of the stress that usually comes with taking the risk of flying for cheap.

After acquiring Virgin America, Alaska Airlines will switch to a single reservations system next week. The company is confident it will avoid some of the problems other airlines have faced after cutovers. We tend to agree. Let's hope it's a non-event.

It's nice to see Alaska Air's CEO saying all the right things about preventing sexual assault and harassment. Now let's see if the new training and procedures actually work.

Slowly, Virgin America is disappearing. That's bad news for its loyal customers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other parts of the country. But it's necessary. Virgin America was too small as a stand-alone carrier to compete with the nation's four largest carriers.

Many have dreamt of finding easy fortune in California. But Alaska Airlines is discovering -- via its merger with Virgin America -- that the airport tarmacs aren't paved with gold.

We know it takes a long time to retrofit airplanes. And we know airlines hate to remove planes from service. But we wish Alaska could work faster to add speedy Wi-Fi. Three years is a long time to wait.

Alaska has been so well run that we expect its early transition hiccups to be ironed out before they cause United/Continental-level disasters.

In recent years, many Alaska Airlines frequent flyers liked to fly American, because they would receive loyalty benefits even when flying the competition. But starting next year, that perk will end, and that's not great news for road warriors.

The move for Virgin's most loyal customers will be a hard one. But in return they get an airline that will take them so many more places.