The Battle for Seattle

In a contest ignored outside of the airline industry and the State of Washington, Delta and Alaska Airlines are engaged in a fight for market share at the Seattle-Tacoma International (Sea-Tac) Airport.

Alaska, a large profitable Seattle-based regional airline that has somehow escaped absorption by one of the mega-carriers, has perhaps surprisingly held its own against Delta, which views Sea-Tac as its gateway to Asia.

You might guess that the mighty Delta is destined to crush the comparatively tiny Alaska. But so far Alaska has shown remarkable resilience. The company’s stock is up over 30% on the year, outperforming both Delta’s and the S&P 500.

I have flown--and like--both airlines, though I haven't had much occasion to use them recently. It's easy to root for the smaller airline, however, which is one of the remaining few that emphasize customer service. Given a choice of carriers, I will opt for Alaska, even though it might cost a bit more.

ALK (up 484%) has outperformed DAL (up 240%) over the past 5 years. Today both stocks sport similar
 fundamentals: their PE ratios are 14 and the dividend yield is 1%.