Why isn’t Alaska growing the SFO hub?

So the latest BTS data (translate.bts.gov) has come out for 2024, and Alaska has been steadily losing market share and passenger volume at SFO, and has now been overtaken by AA, leaving Alaska in 4th place for mainline passengers.

I looked at the data following the Virgin America (VX) merger in 2018, and for a brief period, Alaska peaked in the year 2019, with a 13.46% market share and almost 5.5M passengers flown. Today, Alaska sits at a single digit 8.98% market share with only 3.1M passengers flown for 2024.

Obviously, the pandemic affected things a lot and SFO has not fully recovered as an airport/metro, but the # of seats has not recovered at all by Alaska and the trend has only continued downwards, Alaska is sitting at 57% of the passengers flown since 2019. In comparison, UA has restored 92%, DL at 90%, and AA at 83% since 2019. In fact the # of passengers flown is actually lower in 2024 than in 2022, while we were still halfway through pandemic recovery.

Alaska acquired VX to grow on the West Coast, specifically for getting the hubs like SFO, and instead has shrunk so much to the point of becoming the 4th place carrier. Alaska seems to be wanting to stay at SFO with the new terminal/lounge, but they’re not moving in the right direction. It feels very confusing with the HA merger and whole long haul expansion they’re trying to do, while they let the SFO hub languish.