Originally Posted by
Aviatormar
Other than airplane type, how do you compare these 2 companies?
They both essentially created a niche (below and in addition to the traditional legacy market), and occupy a large share of it. Some of their customer base came from legacies, some was new. Details are different.
Originally Posted by
Aviatormar
Speaking to your second point- yes some of the smaller ULCC’s in euroland aren’t doing so hot. But the larger ones are killllllling it. 500 million in profit? Some of the dumber ideas- crossing oceans and relying on POS with no network to fill 1 flight a day is dumb. But if Ryanair, Wizz or EasyJet decided to harness that network they run and send 5 XLR’s to say NYC, ORD, MIA, PHL and BOS a day, ohhh lord would the big 3 have a problem. Same can be said for F9/NK. Give it about 5 years and some economic heartburn, I think the legacy’s will start to hurt.
Those three are established now and occupy a large share of their niche, taken together they are *roughly* analogous to SWA in the US. That creates an ecosystem in which it's going to be hard for new ones to grow and thrive.
The US is similar with SWA... not a ULCC but it DOES occupy so much of the "cheaper than legacy" market that it serves as a spoiler for the massive growth of ULCC here.
Different evolutionary path here vs. Europe. I don't think there are three large, distinct markets: Legacy, LCC, and ULCC. I think that spectrum can be covered by two large business models which establish economy of scale, with a few small niche players filling in the gaps. I don't think there's room for a vast ULCC market here with SWA in the way. Unless they can steal pax from SWA. Probably some room for point-to-point growth, to work around the legacy hub-and-spoke system. But the legacy customer base is either locked into hub-and-spoke (small towns), set in their ways (older folks), need overseas access, or are just too high-dollar for ULCC (JB has tapped some of that with high-end service between elite destinations).