Not only low but Ryanair got hundreds of millions of $$$ in subsidies from these local "counties" and playing the blackmailing game "you stop funding this route, we're out of here".
A couple jurisdiction sued Ryanair over this semi legal racket and won. So Ryanair did kickstart its whole continent expansion with a lot of taxpayer money.

ULCC Model in the U.S.
 

I think the 170/175 ERJ has more leg room then mainline on all carriers. I think it’s scope so they spread out the 69 and 76 seaters. I prefer deadheads on them over mainline.


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Yeah the European equivalent of Essential Air Service is a bit weird and Ryanair had massive success in rebranding tiny airports who were willing to give them money into new city airports (lookup where Ryanair flies to for Paris, it's 53 miles from the Paris city boundary, requires an 80 minute bus ride to connect to public transport, and isn't in the same province as paris but Ryanair paid no landing or takeoff fees for 5 years when they setup there.

I wanted to bump this thread because the last post was pre-COVID. We’re in an interesting spot due to the industry shakeup. Nobody went unscathed due to the economic hit in 2020, but the ULCCs seem to be least impacted. Moreover, they look like they’re going to be the biggest winners in the recovery. The next few years are going to be interesting ...

I think you are right. They were growing nearly 15% per year before COVID and they (and SWA) are going to steal a lead on the legacies in recovery. Excepting the one nominal legacy (Alaska) the decline of business and international flying is really driving up legacy CASM. Competing on fares for the visiting friends and family crowd isn’t what the legacy business model was designed for and it’s difficult to think that they’ll do well at is. With CASM ex-fuel down around 7 cents (and their own good fuel efficiency) the ULCCs and SWA ought to hold their own against the Big Three fairly well.

Increasing legacy CASM? Haven’t all legacies reduced structural costs? Maybe you mean driving down their RASM?

When you have widebodies that are underutilized but you are still paying debt service on them your overall CASM has got to go up. Although it would be much worse if Uncle Sam wasn’t covering personnel costs. And with interest rates starting to go up, each tranche of bonds that has to be refinanced at the higher rate will drive it even higher. In the interim, you are paying to park those depreciating assets.

This was the big “test” people were waiting to see, how the ULCCs fared in a down economy.
The full outcome still remains to be seen, but it appears that they (predominantly NK and F9) not only survived but thrived.

Had it not been for CARES/CARES2/PAP it's quite possible that Spirit would have been the only airline that wouldn't have furloughed.

And now Uncle Sam is still writing payroll support checks, which Spirit is gladly accepting, and using to fuel our growth. Not a bad deal for Spirit. PSP2 covered Spirit’s losses for the upcoming quarter, total losses. So it’s not even payroll support, it’s “total losses support”, allowing Spirit to tap into their proportionally ample cash reserves for growth.

Thanks Gov’ment for that cheese