As most of you probably know, Alaska’s takeover of Virgin America has been delayed by a couple of months due to negotiations with the Department of Justice. Alaska has finally been given the green light to close their merger, and it looks like that will be happening shortly.
Rumor has it that the deal will close today, and it looks like we have another good reason to believe that. As I posted about in early November, Alaska has a special livery 737 to celebrate Alaska’s takeover of Virgin America. The problem is that they haven’t really been able to fly it due to the delay in the merger.
Unconfirmed photo of N493AS, which is expected to be painted in a special livery that promotes their purchase of @VirginAmerica. pic.twitter.com/bLcjMm7Gzz
— AirlineGeeks (@AirlineGeeks) November 4, 2016
So this brand new 737 has been sitting on the ground for well over a month, which has to be rather costly.
Well, that 737, with tail number N493AS, did a test flight around Victorville, California yesterday, where it has been stored. Then late last night it flew from Victorville to Seattle, where it landed in the middle of the night.
It’s scheduled to fly to Baltimore and back tomorrow, December 15, 2016.
I think we can now count down the hours (or maybe even minutes?) until Alaska’s takeover of Virgin America closes. Of course what I’m most curious about is how quickly Alaska and Virgin America announce a reciprocal frequent flyer agreement, which is potentially what would benefit consumers most.
Stay tuned!
Some of my Virgin America Flight attendant friends have been posting that today is the day they join Alaska, so it looks like it should be happening very soon
Alaska just posted a video on YouTube indicating the same thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgltA76qUxo It seems odd to me that the video's colors, fonts, and tone are entirely in line with Virgin America's brand properties rather than Alaska's. Why, if they are doing away with the Virgin brand, are all of the merger materials stylized as if Virgin America is going to be the surviving brand? Kind of doubt Alaska is going to switch from blue, green,...
Alaska just posted a video on YouTube indicating the same thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgltA76qUxo It seems odd to me that the video's colors, fonts, and tone are entirely in line with Virgin America's brand properties rather than Alaska's. Why, if they are doing away with the Virgin brand, are all of the merger materials stylized as if Virgin America is going to be the surviving brand? Kind of doubt Alaska is going to switch from blue, green, and white to pink, red and purple and a light sans-serif font. It seems like they have no clear direction for the combined brand at this point.
I can see this merger being slower than UA+CO merger.
I thought that merger was cursed.
Hopefully we will be able to transfer from Elevate to DM at 1:2 ratio. I think a lot of us have 50K Elevate points sitting idly after the JetBlue deal.