Alaska Airlines: Proudly all Boeing

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

As I was driving through Seattle yesterday I saw a large Alaska Airlines sign painted on a building that featured a Boeing 737 and the legend ‘Proudly all Boeing’. Alaska Airlines did fly McDonnell-Douglas MD-80-series aircraft, but retired the last one in 2008. Now they fly Boeing 737-series planes.

Although Boeing’s headquarters have moved to Chicago, they were founded in Seattle and they still build planes here. Alaska Airlines is based at Sea-Tac. I liked the ‘Local Pride’ or ‘Local Solidarity’ message. Sure, it’s Marketing; but I’ve been flying Alaska for a decade anyway. You see a lot of ‘Buy Local or Bye Local’ bumper stickers around here. ‘Proudly all Boeing’ seems like a good gimmick. (Of course now that I live here, I don’t really have anyplace to fly Alaska to.)

2

Due to the MD merger, they’ve been “All Boeing” for quite some time now. This makes no sense except as puffery.

3

Alaska flys to a large number of destinations, including Mexico, California, Chicago, Hawaii, NYC, Texas, Florida, etc. So unless you’re trying to fly overseas, you have a lot of choices.

BTW, Alaska Airlines’ stock is rated a strong buy at the moment.

4

Oh, I know they go a lot of places. It’s just that I don’t have a need to go to them. I’ve never been to Hawaii, so I’m thinking I should take a week off and go sometime. There are a couple of HI hostels on Oahu. And I’d like to visit Cape Canaveral too. But since I’m up here, I don’t travel as much as I did when I lived in L.A.

5

As a matter of fact, I’m flying Alaska Airlines from California to Hawaii for a family wedding and a short vacation in two weeks.

Poor me!

6

Southwest Airlines famously has an all-737 fleet and flies more 737s than anyone else. It makes things simpler for their mechanics, so that they only need to stock parts for and get familiar with one type of plane. It also makes things easier for their flight crews.

7

A lot of airlines are going with the single aircraft type model; it makes the most sense in terms of maintenance, crew training, paperwork, etc. Southwest, Westjet (both 737s), Porter (Q400s)… The down side is the limitations on range; one aircraft type is suitable for one type of distance, but won’t allow an airline to expand beyond a certain distance from its hubs, or isn’t cost-efficient for shorter flights in very dense areas, etc. But mergers and codesharing like with the StarAlliance group can take care of that pretty effectively too.

It’s an interesting direction for airlines, and definitely an interesting angle for manufacturers to try and spin in order to sell their planes.

8

Horizon Air is Alaska’s sister company. It generally flies shorter distances and uses Q400s.

9

When we lived in Anchorage, we didn’t have much choice, of course. I think I still have over 400,000 Alaska Air miles.

10

I’d expect Oahu has plenty of Hawaii hostels. :smiley:

11

I thought he meant Holiday Inns. Well, Hawaii does have those, too.

Anyway, go. You’ll love it.

12

HI = Hosteling International.

13

We just flew Alaska Airlines from San Jose to the Big Island of Hawai’i for our vacation. AA has just started nonstop service from San Jose to the Big Island and Maui, which is wonderful for us. No more long haul to San Francisco International! Also, they offered super low fares as a promotional device, and we took advantage of this.

We liked our flights very much. Service was brisk and attentive, seating was no less comfortable than any other airline nowadays, and the plane was clean and well-kept. An added benefit was that our flights were only half-full and we could stretch out, but that was due to our flying on odd days.

So a big thumbs-up to Alaska Airlines from us. The stock is a strong buy, you say? Hmmmm.