Originally Posted by
tailendcharlie
SW will eat Allegiant’s lunch in BLI.
Free wifi on your phone/ipad vs. nothing.
Free carry on in the overhead vs. $50.
Unlimited connections from LAS/OAK vs. zilch.
Once the US opens the border….the floodgates open IMO Allegiant will be run out of BLI with their tail between their legs. You’ll see SW expand nonstop service to LAX/PHX/ SAN & more.
Theres no doubt that Southwest offers a better hard product, network and reliability. However, they moved into a few of our other markets such as SAV, FAT, and VPS and we're still doing fine. FAT has even moved up to 3x a day flights on football weekends. Management does need to tread carefully though. We can not afford to have a summer as troublesome as the previous one again with a cancelation rate above 10% many days even without weather. We are lucky that other airlines' IROPs served as a distraction to our issues. Our network model relies heavily on a near 100% completion factor in order to not royally screw passengers.
Hopefully the increased competition drives management to improve our product as well. We do tend to have a higher income passenger than other ULCCs so there is a market for things such as WiFi, extra legroom seats, etc in my opinion. I suspect these things will come in time if there is profit to be made.