Alaska Airlines to acquire Hawaiian

Russian trolls wish their war mongering dictatorship could build planes

MOSCOW, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Russia's aviation industry will aim to go it alone without the West, using locally built parts to produce 1,000 airliners by 2030 and end a reliance on Boeing (BA.N) and Airbus (AIR.PA), state-owned engineer Rostec said.

The remarks from Rostec, a vast state corporation headed by a close ally of President Vladimir Putin that includes Russia's only manufacturer of civil aircraft,

I saw it. And I can believe it to a point, but only to a point. I could believe it will last for five years maybe, but I expect that if the merger goes through the pressure to combine operations will increase with time, as the fleets, training, and personnel gradually become more similar over time, thanks to the same parent company running both. I'm no airline insider, just a composer who takes pictures of planes sometimes, but I'd put down money that sooner or later they'll merge the operations to make booking more seamless and to make managing everything easier. I'd be completely shocked if they're still managing them separately twenty years from now. Mind you, all of this is predicated on the government signing off on the thing, which . . . probably? To my mind the most interesting question is what happens to Spirit and JetBlue if this goes through, but their marriage doesn't. (I really want to see the Spirit/JetBlue merger happen for entirely selfish reasons. We have service from Spirit locally, for which I have no use at all, but not JetBlue, which sounds . . . intriguing. Potentially useful to me.)

it allows them to move into the Asian market such as the profitable Tokyo-Honolulu route. Their real competitor is not Hawaiian but Delta. Once they acquire Hawaiian, they'll control the schedule and therefore supply. Pretty much what a Spirit Jet Blue merger is hoping to achieve. The sweet spot is how many flights will generate how much profit. Expect only Alaska Boeings on the US routes.

They probably will sell off the Airbus planes that Hawaiian has and will equip with 737s so they can continue to be all Boeing. Hawaiian is replacing their A330s with 787-9s...but I bet that Alaska will have the A321s on the block sooner rather than later.

That was the first thing i thought of.