On Tuesday night, Virgin America’s last revenue flight, VX1948, departed from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) for Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). It landed just after 23:00. A return flight from LAX to SFO will be operated, but it is reserved for employees of Virgin.

Minutes before VX1948’s departure from SFO, Virgin’s last transcontinental flight, VX1182, departed from SFO bound for Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR). VX1182 was Virgin’s last landing, as it arrived at 5:02 on Wednesday morning.

“We’ll be having a get-together in the gate area before the flight,” said Nate Vallier, a frequent Virgin flyer who owns an airline IT company. “We’ll have posters, memorabilia and other swag to hand out and, after the flight, we’ll be gathering in the Alaska Airlines lounge in LAX to toast to the sunset of the Virgin America brand.”

Throughout its 11-year history, Virgin has come to call itself “the airline of Silicon Valley”. It has looked to be at the forefront of the airline industry in terms of passenger comfort, including features such as cushioned seats and “funky mood” lighting before competitors. The airline even partnered with companies such as Netflix, YouTube, and Dysonics to bring passengers superior in-flight entertainment systems that featured tablet-like entertainment monitors and surround sound systems designed to work with any headphone set.

One of Virgin’s most recognizable features was its seat-to-seat texting system, which allowed passengers to send messages to any passenger in the aircraft. The carrier also had a “social network” of sorts for business travelers, which could connect business people traveling to the same conference, for example.

Passengers have expressed sadness across social media over Virgin’s disappearance, but they aren’t the only ones upset over the merger. Richard Branson, the head of the Virgin brand, was initially strongly opposed to Alaska’s purchase of Virgin America.

“Remember that time in 2014 when Dallas residents signed a petition to make sure city council members did the right thing and gave us two gates at Dallas Love Field? And the party we threw to thank Dallas for letting us fly? The legacy airlines kept trying to stop us flying. But we won over people in Newark, Chicago and Boston in similar fashion,” Branson wrote in an open letter to Virgin America employees in 2017.

After these last flights, Virgin will be fully integrated it into Alaska Airlines. Alaska purchased Virgin America in April of 2016. Virgin’s branding will be entirely removed in favor of Alaska’s, and Alaska wasted no time in scrapping Virgin’s logo from airports and planes. USA Today reports that, by Wednesday morning, check in desks and gates with Virgin’s branding had been removed from almost two and a half dozen airports across the US and Mexico.

Customers who visit Virgin’s website will now be redirected to the Alaska Airlines website. The two airlines are also using a single mobile app.

Ann Johnson, a spokeswoman for Alaska Air, said that the two airlines have taken steps to reduce passenger inconvenience due to technical issues, especially relating to booking.

“Mergers that had some visible issues contended with technical issues that sprung from moving reservations from one system to another,” she said. “This leads to chaos, confusion and — ultimately — passenger inconvenience. What we did is basically shut off Virgin America bookings at a certain point. This means, starting on April 25, every passenger flying on an Airbus route or Airbus aircraft has a reservation with Alaska. There’s no moving of reservations and no opportunity for additional errors along the way. Every passenger who arrives for a flight with us on April 25 is already an Alaska passenger, not a Virgin America passenger being moved to an Alaska flight.”

All Virgin flights will now be operated by Alaska Air with the Alaska livery and under the Alaska callsign. All Virgin planes should be repainted by the fall, at which point Alaska will start replacing old Virgin seating layouts. This means that, for a time, passengers might be able to board a plane in an Alaska livery with a Virgin America interior. A complete unification of the two airlines is expected to be completed by the end of 2019.

“[Since Virgin’s last flights], the two airlines have come together and we have a single set of flight numbers with one schedule we are operating,” Alaska Airlines’ managing director of process engineering Sandy Stelling said. “Which means all of the passengers’ reservations and tickets are in a single system.”

Alaska jets will, however, continue to have a slight touch of Virgin. Passengers, in 2019, will be able to access an expansive library of free entertainment and high-speed WiFi on personal devices.

To make sure that customer service agents at airports are ready for the merger, Alaska and Virgin started co-locating employees at the service desks of the other airline so that agents could get used to working together. This means that Virgin America and Alaska gates were located next to each other and certain employees of one airline would be asked to work with unfamiliar counterparts at the gates of the opposite airline.

“And any stations that have not (been co-locating) are trained and qualified to be ready,” Charu Jain, the CIO of Alaska, said. “We feel pretty good, we’re going to have extra staffing and command centers where employees can call if they have questions.”

The merger, which saw Virgin trade hands for $2.6 billion, makes Alaska Air the fifth largest carrier in the United States, operating 1200 daily flights to 120 destinations across North America.

Featured image from Alaska Airlines