<story><title>Alaska Airlines to Buy Virgin America for $2.6B</title><url>https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/virgin-america</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>btgeekboy</author><text>I still think JetBlue was a better fit. Alaska&amp;#x27;s a west coast, all 737 fleet. Now they own another west coast airline (i.e. they overlap) with a ton of Airbus. Alaska&amp;#x27;s probably getting something good for their $2.6b, but I haven&amp;#x27;t figured out what exactly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JamilD</author><text>According to the investor slide deck [0], it&amp;#x27;s to get into the California market, which they&amp;#x27;re not dominant in. This acquisition will mean that Alaska will be #2 at SFO, and a major player at LAX.&lt;p&gt;Virgin America&amp;#x27;s aircraft are almost all leased, so they&amp;#x27;ll be easy to get rid of and consolidate into Boeing aircraft.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;phx.corporate-ir.net&amp;#x2F;External.File?t=1&amp;amp;item=VHlwZT0yfFBhcmVudElEPTUyMjI1MjV8Q2hpbGRJRD02MjgzODc=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;phx.corporate-ir.net&amp;#x2F;External.File?t=1&amp;amp;item=VHlwZT0yf...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Alaska Airlines to Buy Virgin America for $2.6B</title><url>https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/virgin-america</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>btgeekboy</author><text>I still think JetBlue was a better fit. Alaska&amp;#x27;s a west coast, all 737 fleet. Now they own another west coast airline (i.e. they overlap) with a ton of Airbus. Alaska&amp;#x27;s probably getting something good for their $2.6b, but I haven&amp;#x27;t figured out what exactly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>djcapelis</author><text>Apparently Virgin only owns 8 of those planes and the rest are leased, so the speculation I read is Alaska is just likely to change them all over to 737s eventually.  And if they have the capital to operate that same system using purchased planes and not leased planes, then they&amp;#x27;ll be running the same routes with more favorable finances than Virgin was able to.</text></comment>