At the suggestion of listener Tak Wong, Vinay and Rohan discuss aviation in the Bay Area, covering San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. They begin the episode talking about United's growing hub at SFO (4:00), before moving on to cover new foreign carrier services from SFO to various points around the world (6:20). They then move on to discuss the secondary airports at San Jose (12:00) and Oakland (15:00). The episode concludes with thoughts on whether the growth in Bay Area air travel is sustainable through the next dot-com bust or tech industry recession (17:00).
Alaska Airlines is adding routes out of Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego and many places in between to points North, South, East, and West. This week, Vinay and Rohan discuss the new additions (2:00) and what the logic is behind the new routes and capacity changes given the new assets and fleet that the combined carrier will leverage (6:00). In particular, they take note of many of the new red-eye and trans-con routes (14:20) that Alaska is adding that indicate how Alaska is building a network differently than Virgin would have. Finally, they talk about Alaska's decision to keep its Dallas Love Field gates (18:30), which has been the talk of the town.