And, the stock markets seem to like what AS is doing. Alaska stock closed Friday at $61/share. Among the majors, only United closed higher.
UAL $71/shr
DAL 55.87/shr
LUV 52.86/shr
AAL 44.91
Not judgin'. Just sayin'.
i can tell you that right now, alaska air is finding out the hard way, but expected way, about low quality (are there any other kind??) of generic, cyclical ground-handling companies.
in ord, alaska is now handled by 'menzies', a ground-handling company. menzies works alaska's bagroom and was/is delivering bags to the h concourse, where aa employees load the bags and work the outbound.
with this change, aa does not handle alaska air bags in terminal 3 or terminal 5. this is alaska's problem, especially out of t5, the international terminal.
every day for the past month or so, i see at least 14-16 bags, sometimes more, sometimes less, alaska interline bags off a qatar, a british, an aer lingus, a lufthansa, an etihad, an emirates..etc...sit and miss their flight and sit until the next day, only for more bags to come down to repeat the process.
the fault here isn't on menzies, it's the fault of the generic ground-handlers that handle the above intl. carriers and aren't interested in ramping interline bags that i believe those airlines pay them for. i can also point the finger at united airlines...who know enough to ramp lufthansa interline bags, but not alaska off of lufthansa.
result..if it costs $45 a burned bag, we're talking $600-$1k a day in burned bags, along with the bad PR along with alaska being charged with the burned bags to it's MBR, because they are the last handler.
if a passenger if flying alaska after flying any aa intl. into ord, those interline bags are being ramped to the alaska bagroom. aa is not neglecting it's interline responsibilities. i know, because i am responsible for them.