A Tale of Two Tails in the Alaska-Hawaiian Merger Proposal. The post Marriage Minded appeared first on AskThePilot.com.
December 4, 2023
OVER THE WEEKEND, Alaska Airlines announced it will purchase Hawaiian Airlines for a reported $1.9 billion. If approved, the merger will form the nation�s fifth-largest carrier.
I find this interesting for a number of reasons � though probably not the ones most people are talking about. You can pop over to the other news and travel sites to learn about how this union does or doesn�t make sense, strategy-wise. You can read about loyalty programs, stock prices, and the alleged woes of yet more industry consolidation. My take is more fun:
Alaska and Hawaii. Our most geographically extreme states, numbers 49 and 50. One mammoth and frigid, the other small and tropical. They share a lot of traits: remoteness, mountains, indigenous people, whales.
Then we have the tails. Alaska and Hawaiian are the only carriers I know of whose liveries feature faces. One is a woman, the other a man. They stare longingly at one another across the vastness of the Pacific.
It�s romantic, no? They�ve been courting this merger all along, haven�t they? Thus we have a more literal marriage than are most mergers.
Both faces, by the way, are borrowed from real people.
The visage at Hawaiian is that of a woman named Leinaala Teruya Drummond. The former Miss Hawaii, she�s been up there since 1973. Ms. Drummon passed away in September at age 77.
Mr. Alaska�s history is a little less clear. What we know for sure is that he�s not Old Man Winter, Johnny Cash, an age-enhanced Che Guevara, or the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. He is an Eskimo. An Inuit. Though even the airline isn�t sure which one. They narrow him down to one of two native Alaskans: a reindeer herder from Kotzebue named Chester Seveck, or a man named Oliver Amouak, who appeared in an airline-sponsored �traveling stage show� in the 1950s.
Whichever is correct, he�s an iconic mascot and deserves to remain up there, in monochrome and smiling warmly in his parka.
For all of these reasons, I�m happy to hear that the plan is to keep both brands intact. Financially the carriers will be as one, but will operate independently under their own names. I suppose this makes sense. It�d be a little weird to have an entity called Alaska Airlines with a hub in Honolulu. Hawaii-Japan is one of Hawaiian�s busiest markets, and I imagine Japanese passengers in particular would find it baffling.
Of course, things like this have a way of changing. I wouldn�t be shocked if a year from now one of the two brands is subsumed or the carrier changes its name entirely. Pacific Airways, anyone?
�
Photo credits: Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines.
The post Marriage Minded appeared first on AskThePilot.com.
