Originally Posted by
Cyio
I have said this before, but it stands repeating. The ULCC model seems to plateau as the number of planes/flights/personal increase, eventually becoming unsustainable without changing the structure. You just can't run an airline after a certain size on a shoestring budget with all third party vendors. The whole economy of scale things plays out here. Personally JB buying NK was the best thing that could have happened for NK, as it will force them, by means of no longer existing, to upscale the operation.
Obviously the only solution to this problem outside of being bought out is to invest more into your infrastructure, but that means raising prices, which means you are no longer nearly as competitive as SWA/AA/UA etc on those same routes, especially given the extra services and comfort your competitors offer, not to mention route structure and frequency. ULCC works great at smaller sizes and on certain routes, but once you start to compete against more traditional carriers and you grow to do so, things start to unravel. Just my opinion
Yep this is pretty much it. Frontier made money because they are still in the airframe sweet spot. Once they grow some more the ULCC issues will be unsustainable. That’s why a merger with frontier and spirit was a death wish.