Alaska Airlines chief plans more routes after a deal with Hawaiian

The CE of Alaska Airlines, Ben Minicucci, has big plans. Now, he has a second airline to help achieve them. Alaska completed its acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines on Wednesday, the first major airline deal since 2016, when Alaska bought Virgin America. The purchase gives the airline access to more airports, planes and customers, which could accelerate Alaska’s growth, including by adding larger, wide-body jets to its fleet that can fly longer distances. “We saw the potential of us becoming a wide-body operator, being able to offer international flights, potentially in the future out of Seattle — there was so much to like,” Mr. Minicucci said in an interview with The New York Times before the deal closed. “This is something that makes sense for the future of Alaska.” Airline mergers are notoriously difficult and have often wreaked financial and operational havoc on the companies that have attempted them. The merger of United Airlines and Continental Airlines in 2010 created problems for years, disrupting flights and frustrating passengers and employees. The industry is also quite consolidated. Four carriers dominate commercial aviation in the United States, and it’s not clear whether the acquisition will help Alaska, which will remain the fifth-largest airline, to break through to the industry’s big leagues, a feat only a few small airlines have managed. “We remain cautious about medium-term execution risk,” Savanthi Syth, an airline analyst at Raymond James, wrote in a research note about Alaska last month, citing concerns about economic conditions, weak earnings at Hawaiian Airlines and the complexity of merging the airlines.<br/>