[isangpogi]

Glad to see this forum up and running. It's been a couple weeks since I've been able to get on. I just moved back to Boise and am certainly happy to be back home! I've been busy unpacking, biking the greenbelt, exploring downtown and all I've missed by being away.

I am very excited about Alaska increasing their presence here. Boise really makes sense to them, as their hubs are currently just Portland and Seattle. As Alaska is right now, they only really make sense for people traveling to and from the extreme NW. They could increase their market share and presence in the intermountain west by using Boise as a minor hub. They could resume service from smaller cities in the Northwest to Boise, and then feed those passengers from Boise on to Los Angeles, Denver, Las Vegas, Reno, Phoenix and possibly DFW and ATL. This would allow people from Sun Valley, Eugene, Yakima, Tri Cities, Billings, Bozeman, Missoula, etc to fly Alaska without having to do so much backtracking in order to pass through their hubs at Portland and Seattle. Loyalty is such a huge factor in choosing an airline, and Alaska could market themselves as the Northwest's own Airline.

I know I've described this scenario on the main Boise thread before, but I wanted to echo it in a forum that makes more sense for discussion.