page_title: Alaska Airlines
section_title: Virgin America acquisition
hierarchical_section_title: Alaska Airlines / History / 2010s / Virgin America acquisition
caption_attribution_description: English: An Alaska Airlines Airbus A321neo is on final approach to John F. Kennedy International Airport, wearing a special "More to Love" special livery
context_page_description: Alaska Airlines is a major American airline headquartered in SeaTac, Washington, within the Seattle metropolitan area. It is the fifth largest airline in the United States when measured by fleet size, scheduled passengers carried, and the number of destinations served. Alaska, together with its regional partners Horizon Air and SkyWest Airlines, operate a large domestic route network, primarily focused on connecting from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska to over one hundred destinations in the contiguous United States, Hawaii, Canada, Costa Rica, and Mexico.
  The airline operates out of five hubs, with its primary hub being at Seattle/Tacoma. Alaska Airlines is currently not a member of any of the three major airline alliances, but it plans to join Oneworld by the end of 2020. As of 2020, the airline employs over 16,000 people and been ranked by J. D. Power and Associates as having the highest customer satisfaction of the traditional airlines for twelve consecutive years.
context_section_description: On April 4, 2016, Alaska Air Group announced it would acquire Virgin America, an airline based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. With Virgin America operating hubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the merger greatly expanded the presence of Alaska Airlines in California and the West Coast.
  After the acquisition was announced, Richard Branson, the head of the Virgin Group and one of the founders of Virgin America, described himself as "sad" and disappointed. Despite the protest from its most high-profile shareholder, the majority of Virgin America's shareholders voted to approve the sale to Alaska Air Group.
  Alaska Air Group purchased Virgin America for $57 per share, a total valuation of $2.6 billion, with additional expenses bringing the cost to approximately $4 billion. The acquisition was completed on December 14, 2016.
  The DOT issued a single operating certificate for the combined airlines on January 11, 2018. The airlines merged into the same passenger service system on April 25, 2018, meaning that most of the customer-facing portions of the company (including flight numbers, website, mobile apps, and airport check-in kiosks) have a single brand: Alaska Airlines. Virgin America's final flight was on April 24, 2018.  The last Virgin America aircraft was repainted on June 2, 2019.
  The acquisition created one issue for the enlarged Group: Alaska operates an all-Boeing 737 fleet of aircraft, but Virgin America operated an all-Airbus fleet. Even though the 737 and A320 family jets are designed to operate in the same segment – short-to-medium-range segment of up to 200 passengers – the two jets are very different in terms of operation, and anyone wishing to change from a 737 to an Airbus A320 family jet (or vice versa) needs to go through a lengthy training course, a costly process for the airline. The first Airbus leases expired in 2019, with more set to expire between 2021 and 2024. In April 2020, in response to route suspensions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, Alaska grounded 19 inherited Virgin America aircraft, with 12 permanently retired and the other 7 unlikely to return to service; the airline is using pandemic-related flight reductions as an opportunity to retrain many Airbus pilots to fly the Boeing 737 instead.
caption: To mark the acquisition of Virgin America, Alaska Airlines painted a few aircraft in special liveries. This Airbus A321neo, registered N927VA, wears a "More to Love" special livery.
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D3500", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.8.18", "Image DateTime": "2019:08:09 23:06:16", "Image Artist": "", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "2414", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "19424", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1250", "EXIF FNumber": "5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2019:08:08 17:52:09", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2019:08:08 17:52:09", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "9/2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "135", "EXIF SubSecTime": "02", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "02", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "02", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "0", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "0", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "19406", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "202", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}