They have traditionally been a hub and spoke airline, but now are doing a lot more route specific flying. Their only major hub is in Seattle, so that limits how much hub and spoke they really can do.

Their not a huge company which a lot of people like. Their culture is incredible. Employees love it (for the most part) and it rubs off on the customers. They have an extremely loyal group of followers. I worked for United for a while and many of the high ups there were very envious of the culture at Alaska. Another thing that is going for them is they only have on type of aircraft in the fleet, this allows costs to stay down. Southwest does the same thing.

In my opinion its only a matter of time until Alaska merges with Delta. I hope this never happens, but I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't around in 15 or so years and are part of Delta.