Airline Weekly Lounge Episode 70: Virgin Sacrificed

The merger of Alaska Airlines and Virgin American is now well under way and begs the question: How is the integration taking shape? In a word: rosy. Of course, Alaska will be sacrificing the Virgin brand. But Alaska’s management says it’s finding more synergies on both the cost and revenue sides than expected. One of the more interesting moves is that Alaska won’t be joining the Big Three and JetBlue in providing a lie-flat product on transcontinental routes. In other news, Norwegian is adding two new routes out of London Gatwick. While Virgin Atlantic reported a third consecutive annual profit in 2016, that streak might end in 2017. Lastly, Cathay Pacific reported its first annual loss since 2008 and there are, unfortunately, a few reasons that make a turnaround tough.