Why is Alaska Air buying Hawaiian?

[John Levine]

Reports say that Alaska Air has offered to buy Hawaiian, offering a
price way above Hawaiian's current depressed share price. I don't see
the point.

They compete in markets between the west coast and Hawaii, but there's
a lot of other competition from United and Southwest so it's not like
they're going to get any market power. Alaska has a sparse network
from places in the east and midwest to the west coast, and I suppose
they could add connections to Hawaii but they could do that with code
shares.

I've seen suggestions to turn Honolulu into a hub for trans-Pacific
flights. That makes sense if you're going to Australia or N.Z. and
probably southeast Asia since direct flights from the east coast to
S.E. Asia now have to take long detours to avoid Russia. It's too far
south for connections Japan or Korea. There's a lot of vacation
traffic between Japan and Hawaii but merging wouldn't help that.

What am I missing?
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