Buyout/Merger

[denno]

Has Southwest considered a buyout of or merger with Alaska Airlines?  Common 737 fleet that fills in the Pacific northwest flow to many current Southwest cities.   They're struggling somewhat financially.  Might be an opportune time to examine this.

[DancingDavidE]

None that I've heard of. I checked Google just to see if any discussion came up...there was this article from 2015 on Motley Fool that describes some of the obstacles to such a merger.

https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/08/03/another-southwest-airlines-co-merger-makes-no-sens...

Alaska would be tough in the way that Southwest already serves many of the major destinations that Alaska serves, so acquiring them wouldn't really open up new territory except to the regional airports that Southwest doesn't necessarily pursue right now. 

AirTran made sense in order to open up East Coast airports that otherwise didn't have any free gates available. 

[dfwskier]

Agree with David.

On the aviation blogs I follow a much more discussed possibility is Jet Blue hooking up with Alaska

[bgubs14]

I don't think so! But I know Alaska took over Virgin's domestic flights as they already shared a lot of things before Virgin stopped domestic sevice.. I wouldn't be surprised if Alaska took over other airlines it has similarities like this with