There is much to be written on what has happened to the ultra low-cost carriers in a post-pandemic world. We will probably see some not-so-great results when Frontier and Spirit report Q2 numbers soon. While we all know that United CEO Scott Kirby has said their days are numbered, it is far more nuanced than that. We are working on an episode of The Air Show which will go deeper into this, but today, I just want to focus on one issue: route overlap.
We’ve heard the legacy carriers crow about just how good they are at competing with the ULCCs, and they aren’t wrong. They do seem to have figured out how to make life difficult for the ULCCs where they overlap. The biggest problem for Frontier and Spirit is that they overlap a ton, but strangely enough, they’re starting to overlap more. Let’s try to untangle this.
I took a look at July 2024 schedules in Cirium data to show just how much things vary by airline in terms of overlap. Let’s start with Spirit and Frontier. Note that the overlap is airport-specific here, so this is the most conservative possible number. If you include metro areas, overlap would increase.
Route Overlap Percentage for Spirit and Frontier – July 2024
![](https://i0.wp.com/crankyflier.com/wp-content/uploads/2024_07_16-f9nk.jpg?resize=1000%2C705&ssl=1)
Data via Cirium
The relative scale here shows that Frontier actually has more routes than Spirit, but that isn’t a surprise. After all, Spirit has historically done a lot more flying on specific routes every day while Frontier has long done sub-daily flying as its primary schedule pattern.
It’s pretty interesting to see that both have total overlap that’s very similar, in the high 80 percent range. I also broke this down versus the big four US carriers since that’s where the overlap is most problematic.
Southwest has the most overlap for both of these carriers, and it is no tiny number. Frontier has more overlap than Spirit with every airline except Delta. That stands to reason since Frontier’s bases in Philly and Denver create a lot of overlap with the other three airlines. But regardless of how you look at this, the overlap is more than 20% for every single airline.
This is a lot. Or it’s a little. There isn’t really context here, so let me give you some. Take a look at Allegiant.
Route Overlap Percentage for Allegiant – July 2024
![](https://i0.wp.com/crankyflier.com/wp-content/uploads/2024_07_16-g4.jpg?resize=564%2C910&ssl=1)
Data via Cirium
Allegiant has more routes than Frontier or Spirit, but it has such little overlap. Only 14 percent of its routes have any overlap while none of the big four has more than 6 percent. That is one reason why Allegiant has been performing significantly better. It owns its markets, and it has built a remarkably defensive position that is highly unlikely to be touched by the big four. Any competitive pressure that hits Frontier and Spirit does not hit Allegiant.
This is more like what we see in Europe. For example, here’s Ryanair which is far bigger than all of these US ULCCs put together.
Route Overlap Percentage for Ryanair – July 2024
![](https://i0.wp.com/crankyflier.com/wp-content/uploads/2024_07_16-fr.jpg?resize=568%2C858&ssl=1)
Data via Cirium
Ryanair is one of the biggest airlines in the world, and it only has overlap on about a third of its routes. Most of that overlap isn’t coming from the big guys. I even included SAS in the Air France-KLM numbers and ITA in the Lufthansa Group numbers. The result is the same. Those airlines have focused on their hubs with limited point-to-point flying on the likes of Eurowings, Transavia, and Vueling while Ryanair has taken over the rest of the continent (along with Wizz).
Yes, some of this is because Ryanair serves more secondary airports, but that’s a mistake to think that explains everything. Ryanair just owns markets.
Why can’t ULCCs do this in the US? I’ll point to Southwest. The big three legacies did indeed rally around their hubs, but all that connective tissue between mid-size cities was owned by Southwest before the term ULCC existed. It’s proving to be hard for airlines to compete with Southwest for that traffic in the US just from a “total capacity” perspective. Since this old school LCC type of airline doesn’t exist in Europe, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel for Ryanair.
This does make the US market harder than the European one if you’re a ULCC, because there just aren’t places to go where service is truly lacking, at least not in large quantities. So airlines just have to decide with whom they want to overlap most. And Frontier has decided it wants to shift course in that regard.
Frontier has remade its network over the last year after posting horrendous results in Orlando and Las Vegas where capacity grew too much for them to be successful. So what did Frontier’s year-over-year change look like?
Route Overlap Percentage for Frontier – July 2024 vs July 2023
![](https://i0.wp.com/crankyflier.com/wp-content/uploads/2024_07_16-f9yoy.jpg?resize=1000%2C563&ssl=1)
Data via Cirium
Frontier actually has more routes this year, but you’ll notice that its overlap hasn’t changed much. It was 90 percent last year, and this year it’s 89 percent. It’s just that where the overlap lies has changed.
Frontier’s overlap with Southwest has dropped from 51 percent to 44 percent while the overlap with the big three has increased. American has the most with the rise from 27 to 37 percent. This all makes sense.
Southwest is big in places like Las Vegas from which Frontier has chosen to redirect capacity. If you look, Southwest and Frontier overlap on a similar number of markets year-over-year. It’s just that all of Frontier’s growth has gone elsewhere, to markets like Philly and DFW and Charlotte where American is big. It has put capacity in Delta and United markets too, but just not as much.
Does this mean Southwest is really that good and Frontier is running away? More likely it just means that Southwest has added more capacity and is playing the long game of sacrificing now to protect its markets. The legacies have not done this to the same extent, so Frontier sees this as a rosier target.
Naturally, nothing is as easy as having no or limited competition, but that really isn’t an option in the US in any meaningful way. So Frontier and Spirit keep searching for where they can be most relevant and profitable. Right now, it would appear Frontier sees more opportunity against the legacies. This is pretty amusing since those are the same legacies who say that they are killing ULCCs off. Q2 financial results should tell us more about which narrative is closer to being correct.
38 comments on “Route Overlap is a Big Problem for US ULCCs”
Very interesting analysis that touches on the heart of a major challenge for ULCCs.
Just to clarify a few specifics: Total overlap includes overlap against all airlines (not just the AA/DL/UA/WN airlines shown), yes? Does 1 flight/week count as the minimum for “overlap” on a route (i.e., if an airline has a route it flies 14x weekly but that has a competitor flying it 1x weekly, would that route count as 100% overlap, or 1/14 = 7% overlap)?
I’d be curious to see a similar analysis of overlap at the airport-level for Southwest, especially given the investor activism and how WN largely “owns” airports like BWI, MDW, HOU, & DAL, despite similar routes being offered by competitors at cross-town airports.
Finally, while I personally won’t fly Allegiant unless I have little other choice, they have their fans (my parents LOVE them, even though they usually pay > $300/RT for Allegiant with all the add-ons), and this overlap analysis helps to make an argument for why Allegiant’s route network is more defensible as a somewhat unique model among larger ULCCs.
I concur. I also am confused regarding what “TTL” means on that chart. A specific definition would be helpful.
Transistor type logic?
Kilroy – Yes, TTL is overlap with all airlines.
Wendover productions just released a video about the issues with LCC’s on YT. Even though you have published your own aalysis, you & others should find the content very interesting. https://youtu.be/4-Pu3CXatsA?si=ClXkFpK55684G12I
The US ULCC, specifically F9 and NK are likely to go out of business within a year unless they figure out how to make their networks profitable. The constant shifting of routes is the clearest sign the US3 have gotten so adept at competing with the ULCCs that they are literally putting them out to pasture. Look for F9 and NK to try and merge again. That’s their only hope.
Merging 2 companies that have a clear path to bankruptcy, unless you create a monster that is too big to fail, … will probably not save any of the 2
Like Kmart & Sears?
The real issue is there are very few markets left that the ULCC’s can fly to. There are just so many MCO’s, FLL’s & LAS’s to go around. And now those markets have reached a certain amount of saturation leaving little room to expand.
What if they think more “local internationally”? For example, KPHX (Phoenix area) -> MRLB (Liberia, Costa Rica). There is no nonstop right now. Only legacy carriers offer connections: typically one connection option per day. Nearly all of the connection options involve a redeye or partial redeye (flight departs =10pm).
If you are the LCC airline, You could easily base an aircraft somewhere out west, and its day could be [station]->phx->liberia->phx->[station]. No widebody needed. No expensive overnighting of the crew. Dont even need a plane equipped with overwater capabilities (liferafts, etc), since the phxmrlb route is simply flying over land the entire way….
I bet there are more markets like that one.
that’s weird: the posting system dropped some text:
partial redeye: means origin departs before or at 6am and/or arrives at or after 10pm
You mean like America West and US Airways?
Frontier out of business within a year? I get it’s been a rough time for ULCCs but Frontier is still forecasting a profit this year. Not to mention the fact they forecasted a profitable Q2 and given no updates on that guidance I suspect they’ll meet their target. I think it’s misguided to lump spirit and frontier together from a financial perspective. They are not the same. Spirits future is very uncertain but frontier has a near zero bankruptcy risk in the next year. The issue with the ULCCs is the absolutely terrible reliability. Frontier especially. I’d happily fly a ULCC if I could save some money and believe I’ll get to my destination. Let’s be honest, the tickets in basic economy with the major carriers aren’t any better than a ULCC. But at least with united or delta I have a high degree of confidence I’ll have a pretty smooth experience.
To me it’s simple, the ULCCs can’t undercut the main carriers (and Southwest) in price enough to justify their continued competition in those routes.
Allegiant is an exception, but worth noting it’s more of a vacation ULCC. Yes it will fly to a small town that no one else flies, but will only have 2 flights a week. So that’s different.
Personally I’d love to see where some of these new entrants (Breeze, Silver, Avelo) fit in this conversation
I’d agree, I’m curious about how the newer entrants (though Silver has been around for a while) fit into the conversation.
At least Avelo has a mini-fortress of sorts at New Haven. Beyond that, though, I’m not sure what kind of clear competitive advantage newer ULCCs really have, other than having more people at lower payscales, which is an advantage that erodes over time (if the airline lives that long).
I think a major difference between the US and Europe is the size of legacies. Most (if not all) are remnants of national flags carriers concentrated in one single market with little if no overlap !
Some have merged : Spain and UK, Netherlands and France, Germany and Italy (ok, that one is a cheap shot), but those legacies are not really competing with each other (except on long haul if one accepts a connection, and one to one on the route between the 2 capital cities (London to Paris will be served by both AF and BA, but not by Lufthansa or Swiss or Ita !), and have mostly focused their network around one hub in the capital of each national country.
So that left huge chunks of the market to be taken by companies like Ryanair, EasyJet, Wizzair, …
In the US, the 3 (or 4 if you add Southwest) legacies are competing against each other on most if not all heavily travelled routes.
CF’s data highlights the difference between the legacy/WN model and that of the ULCCs: the legacies and increasingly WN operate hubs and major focus cities while the ULCCs operate point to point networks.
Most of the flights that the ULCCs operate that are competitive with legacies or WN are from one of the legacy/WN hubs (whether WN calls them that or not) where it is much easier for the big boys to add more flights and carry a smaller percentage of passengers of their total passengers in that market at ULCC competitive fares on more flights but make it hard for the ULCCs to exist.
While a Frontier/Spirit merger might have worked if JetBlue had not tried to buy Spirit only to have that merger blocked, the DOJ might equally have objected to the elimination of a competitor given the ULCC overlap noted above – specifically in leisure markets where competition helps bring in more leisure passengers. B6, like or not, probably dealt a near mortal wound to the ULCC sector. Maybe good “medicine” can help it “heal” and restructure to see the light of another decade but ULCCs in the US have a very different model than in Europe and will have a much more difficult time finding a niche, in part because the US has forced all airports open to ULCCs – unlike in Europe or Asia.
The recent Air Show that discussed DL’s financials also discussed DL execs’ comments about overcapacity in the industry and their pretty rare comments about other carriers since DL usually is quite focused solely on its own financials and doesn’t make industry comments.
UA reports Thursday and it is certain that they will see domestic revenue weakness and will continue their comments about the impending death of the ULCC sector – which UA has said is necessary in order for UA Next and the huge addition of domestic capacity to work as RJs are replaced with mainline aircraft.
2024 may not be the tipping point for the US airline industry but it will be part of a redefining of its future shape.
Tim,
This is an interesting take & I largely agree with it.
“While a Frontier/Spirit merger might have worked if JetBlue had not tried to buy Spirit only to have that merger blocked, the DOJ might equally have objected to the elimination of a competitor given the ULCC overlap noted above – specifically in leisure markets where competition helps bring in more leisure passengers. B6, like it or not, probably dealt a near mortal wound to the ULCC sector. Maybe good “medicine” can help it “heal” and restructure to see the light of another decade but ULCCs in the US have a very different model than in Europe and will have a much more difficult time finding a niche, in part because the US has forced all airports open to ULCCs – unlike in Europe or Asia.”
There’s only so much growth out there & no one at the ULCC’s thought they had so much more room to expand, but they didn’t account for the big boys just using their size to overwhelm their every move.
Would be interested if Spirit or Frontier can exploit the cost side compared to the big 4 US airlines that gave record breaking contracts to pilots and FAs. With the demand for commercial pilots rapidly cooling, is their a path where the ULCC and regionals can push down costs significantly for labor below the big 4? This would allow them to undercut on price while still making a profit. The unions must know Breeze, Aligant, Spirit, Frontier, and JetBlue’s financial situation.
Sun Country seems to be defying the trends.
Since it operates out of MSP, nearly all of its routes overlap with Delta, yet it seems to be thriving.
Random, crazy thought: Sun Country doesn’t seem to have that much in common with the other ULCCs, but I could see it being merged with one of the ULCCs (Allegiant?) eventually, if just for the usual Wall Street / management refrain of “get bigger to increase efficiencies [whisper: and justify higher pay for execs and perhaps a higher valuation multiple on Wall Street]”.
Sun Country is a unique beast in a lot of respects:
– Their focus on MSP, a market with high fares compared to the rest of the US, gives a lot of pricing room. $19 – $39 fares are common on Spirit and Frontier, but relatively rare on Sun Country.
– They can focus their efforts on appealing to one market and their preferences, rather than having to be appealing to much of the US market.
– They appear to have a much larger charter business, much of which is well-timed to use up excess capacity in slower months in Minnesota (May – November) and freeing it up for Q1 and early Q2 when all of Minnesota wants to thaw out on a beach somewhere.
– They have older planes that they got pretty cheaply, so grounding them for a few days a week isn’t nearly as big of an issue as it would be for Spirit and Frontier.
Sun Country, after some floundering in the late 2010s, seems to be finding their niche and leaning into it. I’m not sure how much other airlines can replicate it, though.
This right here. Sun Country succeeds because they do not try to be anything / serve anyone other than what they are and where they are based at MSP. Obviously, it does help that WN, F9 and NK never had significant operations at MSP to begin with so there was an “opening” for Sun Country which couldn’t be replicated at many other hubs.
Airlines do best where they are strong. (See EKs sole DXB hub, DLs core hubs, Alaska on the West coast, etc.)
The problem (or well one of them) with Spirit and Frontier is that they stretched themselves too thin. Who are they trying to serve again?
Ryanair built up a customer base and brand relevance at Dublin, before doing the same at London Stansted, then continuing to grow and build upon what they had from then on out.
I wish I was kidding when I say this, but I’m pretty sure Frontiers network planners only work Friday or Saturday nights. You can’t just throw darts everywhere and expect it to work, you just can’t.
Just a suggestion Brett: it may have been a good idea to define what “TTL” means in the graphs since it’s not defined anywhere in the article and readers unfamiliar with it (like myself) might get confused.
Yeah, thanks. It’s just total overlap with all airlines.
The problem with NK and F9 is they don’t act like ULCCs should. I’m shocked they are still trying the once daily “bottom of the barrel” flights between two major hub airports. You wouldn’t catch Ryanair flying once a day between London and Paris (unless it was to an airport at least 50 miles outside of those cities). That’s the business plan? That’s a stupid plan.
Ryanair also doesn’t try to send Europe on vacation, I mean on holiday, to the same two places like our ULCCs do with Florida and Vegas. Sure there’s a handful of destinations in Florida but the point remains. Ryanair has literally dozens of summer and winter holiday spots. Frontier does some decent Mexico biz but even Alaska is honing in on that. Meanwhile our bumbling duo acts surprised there is not a bottomless pit of demand to Florida and Vegas and redirects this capacity to compete head on with legacies at their fortress hubs (insert forehead smacking emoji here). Did I mention that was a stupid plan?
I did think they were making headway by moving into jilted hubs and restarting much of the service they lost. That’s still a winning plan IMO (like F9 in Cleveland) but I guess there are only so many of these opportunities remaining.
Hmmm, there’s an idea, maybe try not to expand so far beyond a list of decent opportunities that daily PHL-DFW flights actually seem like a good idea. Do these guys actually think they’re going to make money competing with legacies on nearly 90% of their routes while offering a notably inferior product, especially considering the quality (or lack thereof) of operations? If so, let em fail!
On the other hand, Breeze, Avelo and of course Allegiant act like “real” ULCCs by staking claims to tertiary airports and flying to vacation destinations from out of the way places with no nonstop service. I’m sure they’ll pick up the worthwhile pieces of Frontier and Spirit when they fail.
Why do airlines avoid competing with Allegiant?
I think it’s more the other way around. I don’t see other airlines “avoiding” competing with Allegiant, but rather that Allegiant intentionally makes choices to create its own niche routes/airports with the goal that it avoid competing with other airlines. It does this largely by “inducing” demand by offering cheap base fares on routes flown 2-3x weekly that almost no other airline would really consider flying.
For example, Allegiant flies out of many airports that (before/without Allegiant) have so little (or no) service that they wouldn’t even be considered “secondary” airports but more like “tertiary” or “quarternary” airports. Think airports like Punta Gorda, FL or Portsmouth, NH. (I’d be curious to know what % of Allegiant’s flights touch 1 or more airports at which it is the only airline or at which Allegiant has the vast majority [say, 75%+] of all commercial flights out of that airport; that metric has to be incredibly high.)
In other words, I think Allegiant offers flights that consumers didn’t realize they needed or wanted, but which allow many of Allegiant’s pax to take a convenient nonstop trip that they wouldn’t have considered (often to a destination that they didn’t know existed before Allegiant’s flights started) or that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford.
The Punta Gorda, FL to Portsmouth, NH route is a good example, as while there are plenty of other routes from the Northeast to Florida, almost no one outside of FL had heard of Punta Gorda before Allegiant started flying there, and there still aren’t a ton of people who know where PGD is. None of the major airlines (American/United/Delta/Southwest) would ever consider that route, though many fly from nearby airports in the Northeast (like Portland, ME, Manchester, NH, and Boston, MA) to nearby airports in FL (like Tampa, Sarasota, & Fort Myers).
The PGD-PSM route is the type of route that even the established ULCCs (like Frontier/Spirit) probably wouldn’t consider flying, or at least wouldn’t consider initiating on their own. Only the newer ULCCs (Breeze/Avelo) might consider routes like PGD-PSM, but given that Allegiant has a loyal customer base and essentially “owns” leisure pax’ loyalty for not only the route but also (to a lesser extent) the airports, so it doesn’t make sense for even the smaller ULCCs to compete directly against Allegiant. This is probably part of why Breeze chose to fly from RSW (a ~35 minute drive from PGD on the other side of Fort Myers) to PSM instead of competing head-to-head against Allegiant from PGD.
Just my 2 cents, as someone who doesn’t fly Allegiant but who has family in FL that LOVE Allegiant and fly them for 6+ roundtrips annually. I’d love to see Cranky do an analysis on Allegiant’s routes & airports and to get his take on Allegiant.
Great post. In other words, Allegiant actually does the things a ULCC should be doing and not competing with legacies. As you noted, once they are successful building a customer base in an underserved (or unserved) market, they can actually create their own demand with new service instead of chasing demand like NK and F9.
I’ve always admired G4 though I’ve never flown them and honestly hope that I don’t anytime soon! Especially now that they’ve modernized their fleet, they serve their niche successfully and profitably.
I thought this was a great question, so I took the liberty of pulling the Cirium data and calculated it. I looked at seat counts, instead of flights. It turns out that Allegiant flies 43.5% of its seats between airports where it does not dominate on either end (I used your definition of dominate, i.e. >75% seat share for the year 2024), 49.2% of its seats between airports where it dominates on one end (but not the other), and 7.5% of its seats between airports where it dominates on both ends (there’s a little bit of rounding error in there, which I’ll ask you to forgive).
Spirit (SAVE) revised its investor guidance yesterday after markets closed and said its loss for the 2nd quarter will be deeper than previously expected driven by lower ancillary revenues, highlighting that it is getting harder to upsell passengers even if NK/SAVE is able to get them onboard. SAVE stock is down in the high single digits in morning trading with heightened fear that SAVE will not be able to make it without a chapter 11 reorganization.
TD Cowan downgraded American (AAL) based on evidence of deeper discounting so the fare environment is getting more difficult.
While Frontier might be struggling with the ULCC concept overall, a reduction in capacity and restructuring by Spirit would benefit not only Frontier but all US airlines as a significant amount of capacity could be removed from the US airline system.
UA reports its 2nd quarter earnings later this afternoon and will be watched to see if its commentary about the domestic coach market mirrors what others are seeing and reporting.
Hey Tim,
I think you should take a look at this video from “Wendover productions” https://youtu.be/4-Pu3CXatsA?si=ClXkFpK55684G12I. This makes your point perfectly.
A huge issue for the ULCC model is the [lack of] service. They earned and deserved extremely poor reputations for horrific service levels and failures over the past decade, and just kept doubling down until it couldn’t be degraded any further (outsourcing every customer touch point even at hubs, removing phone support, No interlining, etc). Most people do learn from such experiences. The fact that Frontier actually brought back some level of phone support demonstrates the realization of how poor their product offering had become. There might be some hope for Frontier going forward, but I doubt Spirit can survive without some drastic changes to its model.
My late comments on this thread….
Using Planespotters data as my reference on fleet size:
Spirit: 209 (8@A319, 155@A320, 46@A321)
Frontier: 139 (90@A320, 49@A321)
Allegiant: 126 (34@A319, 92@A320)
A total of 474 as compared to SWA at 818 B737.
Spirit clearly the biggest problem due to largest fleet size and worst financials.
Seems to me that the “American” (North America, Central America) market can support this combined fleet size, or something near it
I also believe that DoJ arguments against JetBlue:Spirit wouldn’t apply to any M&A across similar ULCC models (Spirit/Frontier/Allegiant/TBD)
Furthermore, I assume that most of the Spirit/Frontier/Allegiant fleet is leased, so any return of planes would service the global market and not just the Americas market.
Seems like lots of options exist:
1. Spirit develops a better plan…and I’m still waiting
2. M&A across the ULCC sector, perhaps with financial infusion from large investors (Blackstone, Apollo, etc)
3. Return of planes to lessor
4. More?
In the A32x/B737 narrowbody world, seems like ULCC model nets to lower revenue/flight than Big3 and possibly SWA….which doesn’t seem sustainable unless they have offsetting lower costs.
Some type of ULCC model evolution around choice (network, hard product options) and convenience (network, multiple departures/day) seems necessary to increase revenue/flight. SWA is under rightfully under pressure due to not offering enough choice and convenience too.
DL/UA seem to “Know Their Business Model” but everybody else (AA, SWA, Alaska, JetBlue, ULCC including Avelo/Breeze) seems to require some “Business Model Evolution”.
American consumer would benefit by stronger ULCC alternatives with great choice-&-convenience at many of the Fortress Hubs as ULCC model needs to gain more O/D traffic from more places.
Denver seems to be an interesting Hub Model as each of UA (~475 flights/day), SWA (~300 flights/day) and Frontier (~75 flights/day) all operating at scale relative to their fleet sizes….but this is likely enabled due to lack of constraints (gates, slots, land)
This is an interesting and highly relevant topic of discussion and I hope CF and the Comments continue to focus on this topic.
> I also believe that DoJ arguments against JetBlue:Spirit wouldn’t apply to any M&A across similar ULCC models (Spirit/Frontier/Allegiant/TBD)
The current administration would definitely challenge it, and would likely require the combined Frontier/Spirit entity to divest gates in markets with significant overlap, assuming they are operating from a gate constrained airport at at least one side. At the same time, I think Frontier/Spirit has significantly less overlap than JetBlue/Spirit, so it might be more manageable.
A potential Trump administration is a wild card – they would definitely review it, but it’s uncertain how aggressive they would be.
It’s also worth noting that mergers aren’t easy – it’s a very tricky problem to assimilate an organization of thousands of employees. They will have different ways of doing things, a different culture, and be located in offices in a different city. Frontier might rationally believe that it’s a better options to grow organically, particularly if they see potential to take market share from Spirit as they cut costs and routes on their way into bankruptcy.
I see a Spirit Airlines bankruptcy as somewhat likely, but I think many people incorrectly believe that will also mean that Spirit stops operating. I think it’s very unlikely that they end up in Chapter 7 bankruptcy (liquidation). It’s much more likely that they file Chapter 11 bankruptcy (reorganization), and use it as an opportunity to clear debt and cut costs. Their network will probably contract if they go through a Chapter 11 plan, but it’s likely that there is a viable “core” business that will keep operating.
I think the Justice Department could tolerate some sort of agreement whereby Frontier and Spirit could strategize, in return for some sort of charge to customers based on the fare/mile. I think any such meetings would need to be carried on completely in the presence of moderators to ensure that the strategies were pro-customer.
A big difference between Europe and the US is ground transportation. European ULCC have an easier sell to a secondary/tertiary airport as an alternative. Ryan Air can fly to Memmingen because there is well timed, affordable transport options to Munich. I have no interest in flying to Philly via Trenton or NYC via Stewart because it’s not possible for the flight savings to outweigh the challenge of getting from those airports to the city center. Even using FLL vs MIA is +45min by car and +90min by public transit to downtown Miami.
What doomed ULCC is their additional fees spiraled. $99 to check the bag at the gate because someone didn’t know otherwise. I’ve seen seats starting at $35 for the back of the plane. Checked or carry on bags starting at $55. They either needed to invest in better customer care or better technology – to support iropps.
A NK and F9 merger would have been great if they boosted their frequencies, particularly between major cities, allowed free same day stand by, and offered all in business fares. They already took the step of offering a decent rewards program with solid status perks.
Then you shouldn’t use JFK at all if you’re heading to NYC, cuz it’s the furthest from midtown manhattan out of LGA EWR JFK.
yeah and don’t use DFW either. DAL is a trillion times closer to Dallas downtown, since you’re nitpicking about FLL over MIA.