![](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/03\/alaska-virgin.jpg?w=738\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Alaska Airlines has announced<\/a> they are killing off the Virgin America brand sometime in 2019.<\/p>\n Sad? Angry? You\u2019re not alone.<\/p>\n Richard Branson, founder of Virgin America, just\u00a0penned a love letter<\/a> saying \u201ctears were shed today\u201d and memorializing all the great things Virgin America had accomplished\u00a0before the merger.<\/p>\n In a blog post<\/a>\u00a0announcing the decision, Alaska\u00a0took four paragraphs of rambling before gathering\u00a0the courage to announce the bad news.\u00a0Specifically\u00a0the airline said they\u2019ve\u00a0\u201cmade the difficult decision to retire the Virgin America name and logo likely sometime in 2019\u201d.<\/p>\n Alaska bought<\/a> the Virgin America brand last year for $2.6B, making the combined entity the fifth-largest airline<\/a> by traffic.<\/p>\n While Alaska has a loyal\u00a0customer base (mainly\u00a0in the Pacific Northwest), they definitely aren\u2019t as loved as Virgin America, which has been ranked the best domestic airline<\/a> for the last eight years.<\/p>\n So it makes basically zero sense why Alaska\u00a0would shell out cash (and raise $2B in financing<\/a>) to buy the most popular airline then decide to kill it off the brand in a few years.<\/p>\n Alaska said they\u2019re planning on incorporating the best parts of Virgin into a new refreshed fleet starting in 2019. But part of what made Virgin so loved was its customer service-focused culture, which is something no amount of new\u00a0\u201cexpressive blue mood lighting\u201d<\/a>\u00a0will help recreate.<\/p>\n To give them credit, Alaska also says they\u2019ll add faster satellite\u00a0WiFi and refreshed seats, which will help ease the transition.<\/p>\n While we\u2019ll try to keep an open mind, it\u2019s usually not a good sign when companies think they can slap some mood lights on something and recreate a culture that\u2019s unique from any other company in their industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/03\/alaska-virgin.jpg?w=680\")
Alaska Airlines has announced they are killing off the Virgin America brand sometime in 2019.
\nSad? Angry? You’re not alone.
\nRichard Branson, founder of Virgin America, just\u00a0penned a love letter saying “tears were shed today” and memorializing all the great things Virgin America had accomplished\u00a0before the merger.
\nIn a blog post\u00a0announcing the decision, Alaska\u00a0took four… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-336613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}