I know I've been mostly facetious in here, but I'm not going to lie, this whole thing literally makes me a little bit sad. While I was flying, HAL and AS were always on the "maybe someday" list - especially HAL because of how cool the flying was. I even lived on Kauai for awhile and loved it and rode back and forth to HNL frequently then so the idea that I could do that again and not be hand-to-mouth was always "cool." Seeing them merge is kind of interesting because it seems like Seattle Airlines is on track to basically ruin a lot of the things I thought were cool from the outside lookign in. Legitimately, I always thought was cool about HAL was 717s and you can have a beard and be home every night and fly lots of short legs (I know I'm weird, but zero desire to sit for 5 hours). I could be wrong but the merger changes at least 2 out of 3 of those? And I wouldn't be surprised if inter-island flying was neglected? That's a pretty major damn change.
I mean, I "get it" some C-suite dude is making busy work for himself, but yeah... it's kind of sad and further evidence to me that "it's true, all good things do come to an end."