I recently had a conversation with someone at an airline outside the US who was lamenting how airports in the US just keep raising costs to unsustainable levels, and there aren’t enough checks to prevent it. The airlines have largely rolled over or even approved of the spending… but not all. Allegiant is apparently the hero we all need as it has now told LAX that it is shutting its crew base and scaling back flights since high fees make the operation unsustainable.
It appears that Aero Crew News may have broken the story — I can’t find anything earlier — that the airline would shut its base. According to Ishrion Aviation, flights to Billings, Des Moines, Kalispell, Laredo, Medford, Memphis, Pasco, Rapid City, and Rockford are all going away or already gone. It’s also noted that Springfield (MO) and Tulsa are ending after summer. This isn’t shown in Cirium data yet, but I did double check booking windows on Allegiant’s website to confirm.
I asked Allegiant for comment on this move, and a spokesperson said this:
We will cease base operations at LAX Sept. 2. At Allegiant, we consider our bases to be long-term commitments. We understand that our team members make important decisions about where to live and raise their families, taking into account the locations of our bases. However, when airport costs surpass our average fare, it results in higher costs for our customers, and we’ve found that it no longer provides the value they expect from Allegiant. As an ultra-low-cost airline, we focus on keeping our costs low as industry dynamics evolve, ensuring we remain a carrier that our team members and customers can trust long-term. Paying approximately $50 per departing passenger in LAX-related station costs alone is no longer sustainable. These costs are set to rise further in the coming years with ongoing capital projects at LAX. We will continue to serve Los Angeles with all flights operating as turns from other bases, providing our customers with the exceptional service they have come to expect from Allegiant.
That’s right, Allegiant says it is costing the airline $50 per departing passenger in LAX-related costs alone. This is remarkably high, and it’s completely unsustainable for almost any airline flying short-haul, let alone a low-cost operator.
According to the airport’s proposed budget, cost per enplanement should “only” be $32.52. I put that in quotes, because it is still quite high. It’s just far short of what Allegiant says it is paying. Of course, having a base means that Allegiant needs to lease more space, so there are added costs that lead to the higher number. I don’t think this is likely to be a lie.
Keep in mind that Allegiant is paying this while also receiving a pretty poor experience at the airport itself. After all, Allegiant is one of the airlines that has its check-in counter in Terminal 1.5. After checking in, travelers go through security and then have to take a bus all the way out to the midfield concourse in the Bradley Terminal. That may not matter for a long-haul flight where people don’t mind getting there early. But on a short hop? That does not work out very well.
So now, Allegiant is standing up to the tyranny of it all and closing the base. This doesn’t mean it is exiting the airport, but it will now operate flights from other bases. Here’s how things stack up as of now:
Allegiant LAX Route map generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.
Yellow flies this summer, green flies year-round, red is exited
When you look at the map, you do see that shorter flights tend to go away compared to longer ones. Of course, when it touches another base like Bellingham that’s not the case, but it’s just a general trend. And this is really no surprise. Longer flights tend to generate more revenue, and that makes it easier to absorb the high passenger costs at LAX.
Other airlines that operate at LAX have had mixed reactions to the rising costs. The legacy airlines probably don’t hate it. They generate more revenue than the low-cost operators, so rising costs just helps them push out low-cost competition. That’s reflected in the numbers. Comparing July 2025 to July 2019, United seats are up 7.9 percent while Delta is basically flat. (American is down a lot, but that’s because it dismantled its Pacific hub.)
But look at the lower cost operators and just see how much they’ve cut seats in the LAX market during that period.
- Southwest is down 32 percent
- Alaska is down 23 percent
- Spirit is down 12 percent
- Sun Country is down 36 percent
- Allegiant is down 15 percent.
And it’s not just a cut in seats. There is also a trend toward longer flights in general. Southwest’s stage length is up 15 percent, Spirit is up 9 percent, and Allegiant was up 20 percent before making its cuts. (Alaska is way down, but that’s because it has shed a lot of the legacy Virgin America long-hauls that lost money.)
You may have noticed I didn’t include Frontier, and that’s because Frontier has completely changed course. It used to be that Frontier was the airline that fought airport costs. It didn’t fly much to LAX before the pandemic — just doing Atlanta, Cincinnati, and Denver in summer 2019 — but it was so fed up with high costs at the airport that it left in October 2021. It left Newark as well for similar reasons. But then, it caved.
After Frontier’s performance tanked, it realized it had to start chasing revenue. So, it went back into those high-cost airports, because that’s where the revenue is. From LAX it has grown significantly, and it’s not even doing the usual sub-daily flying that it’s known for. Here’s the current summer plan:
- 2x daily: Atlanta, Denver, Las Vegas
- 1x daily: Chicago/O’Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston/IAH, New York/JFK, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland (OR), Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle
It wants big airports with a lot of revenue where it thinks it can cover those airport costs. I know, you look at a place like Las Vegas and scratch your head, right? But Frontier has no base in LA, so it probably just needs to route airplanes from its nearest base, which happens to be Vegas. Most of these are big cities that skew further away.
What may be more notable is what has not survived. Sacramento and San Jose go away this spring. Those are the kinds of short-haul routes that just can’t cover the costs of operating, especially at a low-fare carrier.
Spirit has done the same, abandoning the LAX west coast network to places like Oakland, Portland (OR), Reno, Salt Lake City, San Jose, and Seattle. And of course, we know that JetBlue has pulled out of all short-haul from LAX.
Perhaps the biggest tell is what Southwest has done. Every single market under 1,000 miles has shrunk compared to pre-pandemic. Vegas seats are down nearly 20 percent, Oakland is down more than 40 percent. Denver is the only one not down double digits at -7.6 percent.
Yes there are other factors including reduced demand, but think about it this way… for flights under 1,000 miles on Southwest, LAX seats are down 40 percent while Burbank’s are down 23 percent, Ontario seats are down 9 percent, and Orange County is actually up a bit.
Allegiant has seen all of this and decided to make a clear statement that it is not going to sit around and lose money any longer. LAX may very well shrug. Allegiant isn’t a major player at the airport, and there are plenty of others who won’t put up a fight. But LAX’s spending spree has changed the face of the airport and made lower fares and shorter-haul that much tougher to operate.
56 comments on “Allegiant Stands Up to LAX for Its High Fees, Shuts Its Base”
Frontier is back at IAD as well, after a several year absence.
After explicitly citing cost pressures as the reason for leaving IAD.
Any government agency (ie: airport) fails miserably at fiscal restraint. With the up coming Olympics and the people mover between terminals, LAX is spending Big Time with the infamous California surcharge (don’t worry, the money is endless). Problem is, there’s no valid competing airport. B6 gave up and moved its base to LAX several years ago. Then, it retreated and scaled back significantly to just trans-continental service similar to what Allegiant is doing.
AA, DL, & UA have 49% of the PAX volume at LAX. The rest is scattered among the LLC & ULLC & foreign carriers. The Big Three are loving this!!!
Would a privately run airport do things differently? I ask as someone with over a decade in airport management. A government run airport generally has to essentially operate at break even. If network carriers are more than 90% of your capacity, would a private entity really moderate its rate policies to accommodate the other 10%?
It seems to me that the same people who scream on behalf of capitalism are the same ones shouting when government agencies behave like capitalists.
In the absence of some government restraint, a privately run airport would probably do a better job containing its own costs (e.g. deliver capital projects at lower cost, keep staffing leaner, etc.) But it would probably still charge the airlines as much as the market could bear.
Ultimately airports are typically local monopolies, and require some intervention or regulation to force them to maximize passenger utility rather than profit (for shareholders, or for the employees and stakeholders of the bureaucracy that operates the airport).
Kenneth,
Oh, their all for capitalism until something goes wrong & suddenly they have there big hands out & we call that capitolism AKA socialism.
Perhaps, but a private sector airport would focus on turning a profit.
There is no market justification for maximizing passenger utility simply because airports are a commodity. Take your average U.S., government run airport and make it private – what changes? No more free WiFi or free device charging. Waiting room seats are now hard plastic without cushion since they’re trading longevity of that seat for pax comfort. The temperature is going to be 5-degrees too hot or too cold, and high ceilings and natural light will be eliminated to control climate further. Restrooms will be cleaned at a bare minimum, and you’ll be bombarded by ads and TV stations that pay to broadcast to a captive audience. You know how in Home Depot someone will walk up to you and try to sell you an A/C unit? Well I hope you like that, because roving sales people are certainly coming, as its again a great spot to reach a captive, generally higher than average earning population.
Airports, like libraries, schools and prisons, are just something the public sector does better … because the private sector has no financial reason to care about quality.
Be careful what you wish for.
I agree with much of your statement. However, I think it’s important to note that there is **some** competition (not perfect or huge competition, but definitely some competition at the margins) between nearby airports (especially in populated areas) for pax & cargo, especially when the airports are not under the same ownership group (whether that be a corporation or a government entity such as PANY or LAWA).
Using the LA example, if LAX costs/fares are high, the most cost-sensitive airlines & pax will be driven to use airports like LGB, BUR, ONT, etc for domestic flights, and even SAN for nonstop international flights (or, to a lesser extent, one-stop international trips via hubs like SFO or SEA).
For cargo, with the exception of the absolute most time-critical freight (which moves at a $ premium on the next available nonstop flight or close to it), most shippers don’t really “care” that much which airport their cargo goes through or if it has a stop or two along the way, so long as it reliably gets to the ultimate consignee in the expected time.
[As an aside, this is far more pronounced for ocean freight. Barring things like the threat of port strikes, it rarely matters to a company with a warehouse in (say) Denver whether its ocean container from China enters the US via the port of Long Beach, the port of Houston, or the port of Newark, whatever makes sense from a time/cost/reliablity balance will do. In that sense, there is definitely some (again, imperfect) competition, even for importers in places like the Inland Empire.]
Not trying to overstate this or to split hairs, just pointing out that there is some regional/local competition on the margins.
Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD) has entered the chat.
Not really. First off airports are usually run by independent authorities, not the government, and are responsible for their own funding through usage fees for normal operations and anything that doesn’t get a grant for expansion. So they’re basically quasi private with the owners being the government.
Second I doubt a private company would do any better because airports are a de facto monopoly in most cases. A region usually only has one airport, maybe a secondary (LA would be a bit of an exception), there isn’t really an alternative to add price pressure in most markets so being private won’t add an incentive to cut fees, only to cut costs so that the profit margins are even fatter.
Third the competition that does exist is the same and wouldn’t change, leave the region or move flights to a neighboring region with lower costs. That already serves to bound airport usage costs and would be no different under private hands (until the private airports collude like the big apartment rental firms did to fix higher prices)
I’d rather stay with the current model where those usage fees are required to be used to fund operations and not funneled off into the pockets of private equity and outsourced operations companies
You will trigger all of the pro-anything government acolytes on this site. Because there is ‘never’ any waste or bloat or inefficiencies in government run projects.
Oops, you already did.
Nah, not this guy. I just spent a decade working in management at large and medium hub airports after a decade in the private sector, so I have a pretty solid perspective.
Most of the “bloat” that comes with airport projects is a result of unanticipated things contractors run into in the process of working on a capital development project, which is going to happen when you unearth 50-year old buildings.
If you want to see what happens when airports start acting more like the private sector, look no further than OMA’s executive bonuses … https://www.ketv.com/article/omahas-eppley-airfield-executives-could-receive-millions-in-bonuses-after-terminal-renovation/63646390
CF,
How does it work with airlines being assigned a particular terminal and gate(s) at LAX> Why would Allegiant agree to being assigned the midfield terminal?
Angry Bob – I think it depends on the airline. But I do know that nobody wanted to move to the midfield concourse, but they aren’t given a choice.
Hawaiian pretty publicly complained and fought being forced to move out there, but it lost that battle anyway. When Frontier was forced to the midfield, that’s when they left the first time. So clearly none of these smaller airlines control their destiny there.
It does seem unfair that the CPE is the same considering the widely varying levels of passenger experience. Could an airport have a “crappy terminal” with a lower CPE for the ULCCs, cats and dogs?
Absolutely. SAT is building one. AUS has one for now. Betting that ground boarding areas of some airports are cheaper than jetway areas.
I have no dog in this hunt, and I am generally not a fan of Allegiant, but I’m going to take their side on this one. These fees are getting way out of hand. Airports seem to be competing on who can build the most grandiose terminal “experiences” while touting to local authorities that “no taxpayer dollars were used in this project.” But they were, the taxpayers just happen to be the airlines. And the airlines have one place they can pass those costs along to -us.
Shoot, I like a nice terminal as much as the next person, as I sure seem to spend my fair share of time in them. But at some point, enough is enough. Maybe a cap on the % of fare an airport can charge airlines? Maybe local airport authorities being a little most price-aware? (Does the terminal at ABC really need TWO rock-climbing walls when one will do?)
If you had a dog in the fight, you’d know that airport construction costs have skyrocketed in the last decade, and particularly in the last 5-years. Even if you want to do a bare bones expansion, it’s not something that can be done cheaply.
You could more easily argue that the fact that the fact that a flight from NYC to LAX is the same price as it was 30-years ago suggests that fares haven’t kept up with the price of operating airports. Yes, hyper competition has been good for the consumer, but it also means that the airline industry is essentially akin to Amtrak, being subsidized by a non-profit airport sector, ATC, and numerous bailouts.
I’ll go on a limb here and say that a ULCC has no place operating at LAX. ULCC customers will drive hours to save 10% on airfare, and that should mean driving to a less convenient, but lower cost alternative regional airport.
Add to that there are only a handful of companies that are qualified to take on such large & complex jobs like redevelopment of an airport. As a result, they charge way more to do the job than comparable size projects in other countries.
Would be interesting to compare airport construction costs in the U.S. with similar countries like Germany (BER?) … I am sure they can do things cheaper in Dubai or Qatar.
Exactly because the US does not import third world migrant laborers and give them no rights along with very few workplace protections. At least not yet.
In fact the US is doing the complete opposite.
Brett, how do the fees at LAX compare with other large airports, such as DFW, ATL, ORD, DEN, oe MIA?
ORD has some of the highest fees in the country – especially compared to ATL/DFW which has very low costs and are also great mid-con connecting hubs.
John G – Here’s a good tool: https://www.dwuconsulting.com/airport-finance/large-hub/cpe
The vicious cycle of the public wanting more and prettier and faster airport facilities and services while also insisting on cheaper and more convenient flights and fares have become increasingly mutually exclusive. Add to this conundrum the trend in the last 20 years for every public construction process of all kinds to take twice as long and cost twice as much (or if you are a high speed rail project, 5 times as long and 10 times as much) and you hit a wall where what worked yesterday can simply no longer work tomorrow.
For the last 10 years, when I fly into LA, I avoid LAX and pick Long Beach, Orange County, and Burbank whenever possible. But on international connections, that is not possible, and as Exit Row Seat pointed out, the Olympics are coming and public spending in Los Angeles is off the charts.
I would point folks to another blog with good details on rail construction costs, https://pedestrianobservations.com/. The trend on rapidly rising construction cost is mostly limited to English speaking countries (though beginning to spread to other places, who are being infected with some of the problems in English world in-terms of approach to construction). With respect to rail, the author of that blog has a POV that this is due to over reliance on consultants and “design-build” contracting among other things, including political interference and gold platting to appease various interest groups. He also argues that Americans/Brit in particular tend to fail to understand innovations coming from other parts of the world because of bias. For me it isn’t be surprising that places like LAWA probably have similar issues in project delivery.
That’s known as “not invented here syndrome” & it has infected corporate thought as a whole.
Avelo must be laughing all the way to the (bur)bank since they serve some of these same western markets from lower-cost BUR and just lost a competitor!
I guess I’m a bit confused. Allegiant is saying they can’t afford LAX so they’re shutting the crew base, but still operating flights to LAX. Won’t operating flights to LAX from another base still cost them $50 per enplanement? If you are arguing it’s too expensive, then shouldn’t you close up shop and go elsewhere? I think I’m missing the connection for how disrupting your team members lives results in reduced costs if you’re not moving all your ops to a cheaper airport?
They are operating fewer flights.
Hov – As others mentioned, they are slashing flights. So the idea is to only operate those from other bases (or that are crewed from other bases) that can make money. But also giving up the real estate needed for a base will lower costs. Presumably this should help them get closer to the $32ish range, but not sure what else is involved in that.
I bet a good chunk of that $50 includes labor. When I worked for “another airline”, I found it cheaper for us to have our own staff manage the flights when we setup LAX. The overall expenses (rent for counter, gate use, office space, bag makeup) was about what we expected. However the outsourced vendors were SUPER expensive when it came to labor.
So instead, because of our frequency, it made sense to insource. (And surprisingly, they still do to this day). We were able to get a bunch of staff to work part time for us who are already badged and work for other companies (eg: Swissport, G2, etc) since we offered flight benefits (the other companies do NOT). Wages were about $14 to $18/hour (this is quite a few years ago) and our cost per turn was managable for the operation.
Fastfoward to today, and I can see where Allegiant gets this $50 rate. As some jurisdictions move to a mandatory $15/hr min wage, they upped everyones wages.
If only BUR and SNA had longer runways. If only LGB and SNA weren’t slot/capacity restricted. If only ONT were closer to DTLA. If only El Toro had replaced SNA. If only there were fast rail to PMD. If only…
… If only I had a G600 at SMO!
A dirty little secret in the airport real estate world is that large international airports are a money funneling mechanism. The money funnels from affluent travelers to specifically targeted specific minority groups by way of “minority-owned business” contracts with unnecessarily high profit margins. In reality, the awardee just subcontracts the awarded work and skims a bunch of money off of the top. It’s a very ineffective welfare program because it awards a *ton* of money to a very small group of people. While the target is “affluent” travelers, in reality it raises the costs for all passengers who use the airport.
That’s why a new construction project at LAX, ORD, JFK/LGA, even DFW, etc. costs several times higher per gate than a comparable project at an airport where the airport management is less susceptible to those sort of giveaways.
All GC’s subcontract to all trades. Most self perform less than .05% & just project manage. I don’t understand why it’s “money funnelling” , a “giveaway” or a “dirty little secret”. In my city, which is very big but not LA big, MBO bids to GC’s are typically lower, not higher.
While it is true that all GC’s subcontract at least some of the work (and sometimes all of the worl), these contracts provide a lot more flexibility to the awardee than a typical contact, and the bidding is fenced off in such a way that well-connected minorities are the only possible awardees. Contracts are setup in the airport world to allow minority-owned businesses skim a whole lot more than .05%, and these businesses don’t even “project manage”.
That is not how it works
Airports contract out construction to GC and the contract has a DBE participation goal.
It is not some sort of high margin, money funneling operation that you make it out to be. It doesn’t affect costs much at all.
We know DEI is the new Boogeyman.
This isn’t about politics for me. I am just trying to shine a light on fraud, without doxing myself.
When millions (billions, really) are funneled out by way of these contracts, airline passengers have fewer competitors to choose from, and end up paying more.
There is no cheap way to build a people mover over the existing LAX roadway, no way to solve the nightmare that is driving the LAX horseshoe roadway system without a people mover or removing close in parking, no way to add gates without either huge expense (underground people movers) or inconvenience (shuttle busses). As an airport gets more constrained it gets more expensive to solve the constraint problems. Those large hubs with a low CPE can generally build on more of a greenfield type space versus building on top of current operations. Government in-efficiency and regulations make the costs a little higher sure, but the big driver is just how difficult it is to get something built on an active operating area.
It’s actually very cheap and easy to build a people mover over the existing roadway – shut down the roadway. Temporarily severely inconvenience passengers and “pull off the band-aid” rather than having these projects drag on for a decade, all while interest and inflation eats away at the contract value. In my ideal world, it would be similar to LAX-it, but completely shut down the horseshoe and get all of the maintainence and construction completed in parallel at once. You can run shuttle busses every 30 seconds from remote lots to access the terminals. You’d probably only need to shut down for a couple of weeks, maybe 6 months at most with this approach, and you’d get the people mover up and benefitting the public a decade earlier for a tenth of the cost.
It seems like a lot of Southwest Short Haul LAX passengers have shifted to LGB as its keeps growing in popularity.
It would be interesting to see How LGB has progressed since the Southwest take over Vs the Heyday of JetBlues operations.
I’m surprised Allegiant hasn’t tried to make a ONT an ULCC LAX alternative.
ONT might as well be Ontario, Canada if you’re going to downtown LA or anyplace west of there. Which is to say nearly all visitors to LA and the majority of the residents too.
Did somebody say Long Beach? ;)
Pre-pandemic, Southwest did best in LGB in Q4. It hit a 16 cent unit revenue in Q42019 but it has been nowhere near that since. To be fair, that’s probably because it now has longer flights. Stage-length adjusted unit revenue (to 1,000 miles) in Q4 was 9.6 cents. It matched that in Q2 2024. To be fair, the percent of local vs connecting traffic has dropped as well from the mid-80% range pre-pandemic to the mid-70% range now. So that further dips unit revenue.
Fare have risen. I like to look at a single route to see how it has charted. JetBlue’s fare to Sacramento was never better than the $80+ range. Southwest has been over $100 since Q2 2023.
It’s hard to really compare this in a comment here, but LGB is doing better for Southwest. I wouldn’t call it a spectacular performer, but it’s also not awful.
It’s a sad day when G4 has to leave LAX. They have been battling with the LAWA folks for years and it looks like things haven’t changed. Back in 2012, G4 used to operate from T6, and LAWA wanted them to move to T3 where they physically wouldn’t fit. Back then LAWA had no time for G4, and didn’t treat them as a viable airline. Their suggested moves did not consider the additional costs of ground handling, and they really wanted them to “go away”. It’s interesting to see that this leopard hasn’t changed his spots. As an airport / aviation consultant, I always prided myself on have good working relationships with airport authorities. That wasn’t the case with LAWA, unfortunately.
To clarify – having a crew base requires a lot more terminal rent to accommodate the administrative roles involved.
So you’re saying that the “real” CPE would be higher for an airline with a crew base just because of the requirement to rent more real estate? And that’s before considering the actual labor costs themselves?
This may be anecdotal, but I think airlines like Allegiant are actually now facing real competition from legacy carriers in markets they used to dominate. I know the Kalispell, MT (FCA) market well, having traveled there for over 30 years. You could never have dreamed of a non-stop to LAX 10 years ago, unless it was on Allegiant. Now in the summer high season, AA, UA, DL, and AS all fly the route to LAX. Also, it’s not like G4 has some stellar reputation in these dependent small markets (or even served them daily), but when it was the only game in town (and cheap) it was useful. Looking at the route map where other flights have been eliminated, GEG, MFR, BIL, PSC all probably have increased flight availability from majors as well, especially in summer high season. While the higher costs at LAX definitely are part of it, Allegiant has been a victim of its own success, proving that certain markets will work and then the legacies are able to swoop in, with more frequent schedules and reliability.
ONT has China Airlines and Avianca, just a data point. I recently used Avianca out of ONT for a cheap beach holiday in El Salvador. I would be using China Air this fall, but am too fond of Singapore Airlines to switch. Besides, they make you pay extra for any seat and overcharge unabashedly.
I am currently at MXP. I began my journey at ONT, because just getting to and from LAX is an absolutely miserable experience.
Frontier just started flying into PSP, (my nearest airport) which would be absolutely wonderful if it were any other airline but Frontier.
Cranky: is there any recourse from the PAX end at LAX?
I’ve often thought if LAX was a private business I could ask for/demand a refund. So many out-of-order escalators, broken elevators, non-functional water fountains, and in the restrooms I have to often try up to 3 different sinks to get a working/filled soap dispenser. Then it’s a game to find a paper towel dispenser that has paper in it. I know the staff at LAX get a ‘living wage’ but clearly they are not motivated to keep up with the trash and restroom maintenance.
Sure things are getting better in terms of facilities, but as someone who uses LAX several times a month I feel I’m getting ripped off… and that’s before reading this post about the overall fees.
I know I’m paying for a service that I’m not getting all of.
How can I get a partial refund? I’m guessing the airline won’t help as they just collect, anyone specifically at LAWA we can petition?
GetmeouttaLAX – That’s a sore point with me! I went through DFW a few weeks, and couldn’t believe the dirt and filth in the washrooms! Some stalls were indescribable and totally unusable, wash basins didn’t work, air dryers didn’t work, no paper towels! I could not believe how bad it was! In contrast, the airport I constantly used was ORD, and the facilities were fastidiously clean! Shining, in fact! Then a couple of years ago, the cleaning company lost it’s contract with the City, and the DoA took it over – using many of the employees from the previous contractor, and they haven’t forgotten how to clean! While not quite as good as it was, it’s still (generallY0 quite acceptable – and far better than DFW!
Nope, no recourse at all.
Cranky’s link comparing costs speaks volumes. The median Cost Per Enplanement is $13. LAX is more than double that according to DWU Consulting. I could see it being a bit more given the cost of operating in California and the necessary infrastructure improvements underway, but LAX also needs to be competitive.
SAN, SEA and PDX are all under $20 and are undergoing big renovation projects, too.
I wonder if LAX could/should consider creating a bare-bones ULCC terminal like some European airports have built. Maybe something without jetbridges, a spartan terminal building and no wifi to spitball ideas.
I actually asked about that above, if it would be feasible for an airport to have a crappy no frills terminal for the ULCCs with a lower CPE.
My guess is that it’s possible but the major carriers at the airport (especially a hub airline) would work behind the scenes to ensure that would never happen to prevent other airlines from having a structural cost advantage on any competitive route.
Good points Chicago Chris, and BillfromDC!
Back in 2012 (thereabouts) I suggested that the Flight Path museum – the original terminal – be reactivated as a ULCC terminal – and that we would operate the museum for no charge! (I was a big spender then – even for a ULCC!). Needless to remark – LAWA threw up all over the idea!
Preposterous!
But, as I pointed out – this was a cost center for LAWA – why not eliminate it, and it would be one way to help reduce their costs! Nope! Flat out NO!
You are bringing back memories!
Thanks for your comments!
I think the 2023 numbers are one thing…
But looking at the future LAX CPE numbers, $56.07 for 2030???? Yikes!!!
ATL is looking at $10.49, CLT $7.84, DEN $16.86 in 2030.
I think anything +/- $3 is largely irrelevant, but +/- $40 is meaningful. Unless you’re flying international business, it will definitely have an impact on short haul passengers and I can see why the planning department at Allegiant is pulling the rip chord… why wait???