All Things Travel: Alaska Air To Buy Virgin America For More Than $4B
BOSTON (CBS) -- Alaska Airlines won the bidding war over JetBlue and will buy Virgin America in a deal worth more than $4 billion.
The deal, when completed, will vault Alaska past JetBlue as the fifth-largest domestic airline in the U.S. It operates more than 1,200 daily flights.
Both airlines operate at Logan Airport. Alaska flies daily to Portland, Oregon and Seattle, while Virgin flies to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Both airlines have good reputations for service and competitive fares.
The combined airline would probably fly about three percent of Logan Airport's 33 million passengers annually.
The most immediate question to be answered at Boston's airport is: What terminal will the combined airline use?
Alaska operates in Terminal C at Logan, while Virgin has its own space in Terminal B. The best guess is that the combined carrier would fly from Terminal C and its current gates would be taken over by American Airlines next year.
The interest in Virgin America centered around more routes on the West Coast, where both airlines have their headquarters. Another question that remains is: Will the Virgin Atlantic brand disappear?
JetBlue is the number one airline serving Boston and has added routes to the Caribbean and South America to its route system, and it wanted to expand further on the West Coast. The airline could be a takeover candidate from Southwest Airlines, which last year absorbed Air Tran Airways and added international schedules for the first time.
In the past decade, American Airlines has taken over US Airways, Delta has merged with Northwest and United and Continental have become one airline as the industry consolidated. The low cost of fuel has made the airlines profitable, and they are adding new planes to their fleets.
All Things Travel reports with Bob Weiss can be heard on WBZ NewsRadio.