What Happened to the Cool West Coast Airlines?
While I fly Alaska quite often, Dvorak reminds me things were a lot better on Alaska as well as reminded me of several other airlines from the mid-1980s that I saw advertised all the time in California, but never got to fly because I was too young to go anywhere on my own. I also remember the Alaska ads from the 1980s. They were way cool!
The “PSA History” page gives some great insight as to what the hell happened–a whole lot of mergers.