Originally Posted by Excargodog

I am not sure the conventional wisdom even applies any more. These ULCCs are growing 16-17% year over year. They have a young fleet of highly fuel efficient aircraft and a relatively young workforce which means their pilots are less costly even if they had the same payscales as the legacies - which they do not. It is an enormous advantage.

So which airlines are going to do better in the next recession - F9 and NK with their 4-5 year old A320 fleet or legacies like AA with their mixed aircraft fleet with an average age of 11 years (and a $23 Billion debt), United, and Delta both with 15 year old and less fuel efficient fleets? It might well be the ULCCs.

And please don’t say the Big Three are too big to fail, all three of them have been in bankruptcy in the last 16 years. We may be seeing a paradigm shift where the ULCCs are the airline equivalent of streaming video compared to the legacies DVD rental or (for those that remember) VHS.