Originally Posted by
Michaelc136
This take is off… If NK disappears it would open up more gates and expansion opportunities for frontier allowing them to offer more profitable routes.
JB is not merging with anyone in the near future. Even this republican DOJ would not go for a JB merger with anyone bigger…
But lets say you are right… lets say AK wants to expand its horizon east with more european destinations and scoops up JB in addition to their HAL takeover.
That leaves us, WN, G4, SY, XP, and MX
Next to WN, frontier would be the biggest LCC in the country and WN isn’t even LCC anymore... I believe you are underestimating the need people have for low cost travel, Necessity travel as I call it. If you take over every route with cheaper fares some people will choose accordingly. The reality is there’s always someone willing to travel on F9… with spirit out of the picture, it just adds more. If people truly think NK is worse than F9, and NK still has customers, it says something.
As much as we joke, Greyhounds are still running for a reason.
There's one problem that you seemed to "assume" away and that's that we can expand. There's a reason why we don't have more gates in major cities - it's not because of NK. If their gates go out to the highest bidder (or worse, AA, UA and DL use their local political power to block anyone else), then we're still the same size (and they're bigger). ULCC has always had a real estate problem.
Overall, I hope you're right. But I don't think so. ULCC is broke. There is no way around it. Not spending on your employees or your gates or your gate agents doesn't work anymore. It had a good run, but now it's time to change/adapt.
BTW - Greyhound really doesn't have competition (is there an upscale nationwide bus service)? And to think, there are people that will take that over F9...