There are a lot of theories for why the low-cost carriers are suddenly failing since 2020 in the US, but in my opinion the big one was inflation - of costs, of disposable income, and of expectations.
Pilot salaries and fuel costs both skyrocketed since 2020, and at the same time the US got significantly richer and people got more of a taste for luxury. Expensive, premium things have never been doing so well in the US. All of a sudden, you have a double whammy of low-cost carriers being forced to raise prices and get less competitive, while consumers are more inclined to pay for luxury.
Not to mention - American LCCs were never in that great of a position, structurally, vs the European LCCs. Ryanair thrives on quick turnarounds, cheap airports, cheap pilots, short flights and high population density. The US has none of those. The EU's population density is 112 people/km2 vs 36 in the US, even cheap US pilots are very expensive, turnarounds are slower, and there are few budget airports where the people live. The Port Authority is spending 25 billion dollars on revamping the three NYC area airports. Meanwhile Europe is full of cheap semirural airports like Frankfurt-Hahn, where the most recent renovation cost in the single digit millions. Where do you think you can land a 737 for cheaper?
I would be curious to know exactly _why_ you think my argument is wrong, especially when I have proposed a decent mechanism relating to population density: cheap semirural airports and short flights. Frankfurt-Hahn or Paris Beauvais or Girona or Weeze have millions of people living right next door and are dirt cheap (multiple orders of magnitude cheaper than US airports.) Meanwhile, there are far more small rural airports in the US than in Europe, by approximately a factor of three [0] [1], but not enough people live by them to make regular flights efficient. For a great example of this, look at the Essential Air Service and how many taxpayer dollars the US spends to serve the many rural communities that would otherwise have no flights at all.
Ryanair doesn't really fly to those anymore though. They just fly to the low cost terminals at the major airports now. Here in Barcelona they just go to El Prat, not Girona.
Hmm... no? They still fly plenty out of all of those airports. Beauvais has 33 Ryanair departures on the board, Hahn has 8, Weeze has 15, and I see eight Ryanair flights for the day on the Girona departures board right now, in the off-season when most flights there don't operate. Less than El Prat, sure, but way more than you could ever imagine Spirit doing from a comparable area in the US, which is my point.
The concept is that it is fundamentally wrong to smear the population of NY across the total area of the US. You make a point to back an argument - the argument might be correct but your point is not.
> Frankfurt-Hahn or Paris Beauvais
Note that they are close to dense population areas Frankfurt and Paris. Not part of average density areas.
I am just saying I have seen the pattern occur repeatedly where "population density" is used to attempt to prop an argument: density is averaging and is often meaningless.
Hmm. So you don't disagree that cheap semirural airports with a population base and short flights are important parts of the model, but you don't think they are related to population density? I don't see how those could be unrelated.
Perhaps a simpler way to convince you of the importance of population density to today's LCC model: Take a look at a map of where Ryanair flies. Under the 58th parallel, on the entire European continent, there is only one place over 250km from a Ryanair airport! Look at all the tiny airports, Limoges or Valladolid or Brive or Osijek or anywhere really. Ryanair flies to 250 airports and they do it with hundreds of 737s operating like clockwork, one short flight to another, not a tiny regional plane to be seen. Meanwhile, Delta flies to a similar number of airports in the US (in the 200s) but the majority of those are with small regional jets which are way less cost-effective than 737s; if you're an LCC, that means that you can forget about flying there. Obviously Delta is flying all those regional jets not for fun, but because they can't fill a 737, because the local population is not large enough to support one. I don't see how population density is not a core part of the issue here.
I think transport in the US might be a factor, though. While Frankfurt-Hahn and Beauvais are particularly extreme examples (they're further from the notional place than most budget airports) you can still get to the the relevant city relatively cheaply (if not particularly _quickly_, in the case of those two; about two hours). In many parts of the US, I suspect you'd really have no option but to hire a car, which instantly wipes out any price advantage of the budget airline.
I think a better measure would be an average of averages of adjacent populations.
Define a node as a population center (say NYC) and then edges as cities (Boston, Philly, DC, Pittsburgh) with the weight being the population of the respective city. Average the populations for each mode and then average those averages.
The idea of this number is it would represent the average population of points of interest.
AIUI low-cost flights work best in an area where there's a lot of sizable city pairs about 1h-3h away from each other. Europe has more such pairs than the US, as indicated by the much higher population density.
I imagine most non-corporate, non-loyalty fliers use flight search engines where they can easily compare prices. If Spirit has the worst reputation, which I think is a given, consumers have to weigh the price difference between Spirit and a 'regular' carrier against that bad reputation.
That begs the question, how much cheaper is a Spirit flight compared to other carriers for a given itinerary? In my experience, it's maybe $50-$150, compared to a trip that might cost $500-$2000 overall. It's not like fliers are choosing between Spirit and first class on Delta. They're deciding whether or not to spend an extra ~$100 to be slightly less miserable on a trip that may be one of their largest single expenses of the year, and maybe their only trip of the year.
Exactly. In America today people have very little vacation time, a lot of money, and a taste for luxury. With the recent increases in salaries and fuel costs, the delta between the LCCs and the legacy carriers has dropped. You're a consumer in America taking your single yearly vacation. Are you going to save $40 on your several-thousand-dollar trip to fly Spirit? Apparently not. Meanwhile in Europe you're flying shorter distances more frequently, you don't care as much about Easyjet vs Lufthansa, and 40 euros is a lot more money.
On the other hand, when I fly to Vegas, typically Spirit and Frontier are less than $100 round trip. Southwest is $250-$275, and the traditional airlines are over $300. And it’s for the same no-meal, shitty legroom, unpleasant experience. So what am I paying 3X for? A brand name?
The low cost airlines in Europe are very sustainable though. They're doing great and even the old airlines are following their models now, like charging for luggage.
Also, Europeans have a lot more time off. When you're making a long weekend trip, catching a Ryanair flight and suffering through it (it's not super comfortable, but you get what you pay for) is not a big deal because the flight is short, it probably gets you close to your destination which was maybe picked because of this, and it doesn't matter that much because this might be one of your multiple trips that year.
It's not the same flight. I avoid American, United and the discount carriers because they have the smallest seats. Spirit is also one of the only airlines without power outlets. Personally, I don't care if it's a 1-2 hour flight. I'd be happy to stand. But on a 4+ hour flight, a hundred bucks isn't so bad for bigger seats, a power outlet and maybe even a TV and free WiFi depending on the carrier.
Caring about seat size makes sense, but power outlets - for $30 you can get a good quality battery that will charge a mobile phone multiple times from its capacity, for $100 you can get one that'll fully recharge a laptop once or twice. So unless the price difference for flying is tiny, it's really not worth paying more because a plane has power outlets when you can pay less to get a device that's not only just as good for the one trip but that you can then use on future trips without paying more (except for the tiny cost of electricity to recharge it before the flight).
I thought I didn't care, but I chose Delta instead of Southwest on a flight and not having to think about it at all (did I charge my laptop? my phone? my headphones? it's okay, I have a portable battery, wait, is it charged? did I remember it? can everyone else get up, I left my battery in the carry-on?) makes flying less stressful. Plus, it's one less thing to carry around for a week. Same goes for assigned seats, it's one less worry while being shoved into a tin can and flung into the sky.
Fair enough - I elaborated here [1] on why it's by far the better option for me, but I completely accept that different people have different priorities and different weightings to the pros/cons, so whatever works best for you is great too.
Yes, there are novel solutions to many problems, but an outlet is the most reliable and lowest effort solution. And nearly every plane has them these days, so why overthink it.
For me personally, taking into account whether or not a plane had power outlets is the overthinking option.
I've been on planes / trains / coaches that are expected to have them, but who had faulty outlets at my seat for that particular journey and I wasn't able to use them. So I just have a small battery pack (little bit bigger than a pack of cards), and a big one for laptop recharging, and I take one or both (plus my slightly bigger than a lipstick one that's light and fits easily in pretty much every clothing pocket I own) depending on the trip I'm going on, meaning no added complexity as it's just like remembering to take my laptop's power cable, and I no longer have to spend any time thinking about whether the transport will or won't have a power source for me.
I appreciate what works for me won't be the preferred solution for everyone, but for me it definitely leads to less overthinking per trip not more. (And personally I don't notice the added weight of these batteries in my bag; and I would want them for travelling even if I could be guaranteed every flight & train had working power outlets, as I've had times when they were useful to have when visiting a client's offices, or when staying in a hotel with a dodgy outlet, or when going hiking an nowhere near power outlets - so in my case it wasn't even an additional cost caused by not trusting planes to provide a good power supply.)
Unfortunately, the more useless the signal the more effective it is, and the degree of signaling in recent years has only increased. This reminds me of an excellent article from almost twenty years ago: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aggressive-ostentation/
The thing is, comfort is sticky (as I well know sadly, second class is hard to bear for me).
Low-cost companies targeted people with low disposable income at the cost of comfort.
People who used to have low disposable income have now not enough to travel by plane (or at all), and people who had enough to use standard companies have still enough to use them.
A very interesting fact is that median income grew in the US (less than average, but close enough). The standard deviation (from memory, if this isn't the translation of 'écart-type' I'm sorry) grew also, which indicate that the recent economic 'boom' the US experienced since the end of covid took more than 50% of us citizen with it, but clearly not a huge majority. Germany experienced a very similar thing since 2012. To my knowledge, in Germany it was most likely caused by a transfer from progressive taxation to a fixed one, reducing purchasing powers of people with low disposable income. In the US it seems it's a direct income issue.
In the US? Absolutely. Look at Apple's market share post-pandemic, the growth of organic food, luxury spending, cars, anything really. There has been an overwhelming shift to luxury. Google the 2020 vs 2023 Prius. Hell, even McDonalds is trying to move upscale!
The low cost carriers I've flown in Western Europe and Asia were way better than the the regular US carriers (United, Delta, Southwest, etc.) They had much better seating, planes, restrooms, policies, etc.
By contrast the US has the worst airlines out of anywhere I fly. Even the regular non budget ones are bad. Frontier and Spirit are the only airlines on my "never ever again" list, no matter how much cheaper they are. I've never felt as dehumanized, like cattle to the slaughter, as when flying on them...
> low cost carriers I've flown in Western Europe and Asia were way better than the the regular US carriers (United, Delta, Southwest, etc.) They had much better seating, planes, restrooms, policies, etc
Examples? I’ve done every mode of transport in Europe. The planes are your buses.
The only domestic flight I've been on in the US was United, and it was possibly the worst flight I've ever been on, though my judgement may be coloured by how late it was. Beyond that, though, I'm not sure I've ever been on a plane that felt as much like it was... falling apart (I'm sure it was structurally safe, but some of the ceiling panels were out of place, a number of seats were broken, etc). It wouldn't fly (see what I did there?) with Ryanair.
Legroom and general plane modernity/comfort were the big ones for me, as well as check-in and luggage drop-off procedures. The European and Asian airlines do the basics really well, and I never felt uncomfortable in them. I remember loving my experience with Norwegian Air, for example, which beats ANY US airline I've ever flown on (United, Delta, Southwest, American). Only Alaska came close, but only during covid (when there was a lot of empty space). Otherwise, in normal times, the US airlines have incredibly cramped legroom, really old planes that you often can't stand up in, have minimal overhead space, etc. This is especially true in regional/rural routes, but even the urban hub to hub ones are not great in my experience.
The US airlines are generally tolerable, but they just feel... bad. Like they don't really care about their customers at all and are just trying to milk you for every last cent and would really prefer that you simply not be a customer if you're not satisfied, so that somebody else can take your place, rather than trying to make you comfortable. Everything is cramped and dirty and in a rush and poorly run all the time. By contrast, the processes in Europe and Asia are so streamlined and the staff were much nicer.
However, Frontier and Spirit were especially atrocious. I've never known anyone who was willing to fly them more than once. "Never again" is a common refrain I hear whenever I discuss them with other travelers, or even just walk past one of their lines in the airport. Ugh.
> I’ve done every mode of transport in Europe. The planes are your buses.
Sorry, what do you mean by that? Not sure what "planes are your buses" means?
Over here, some of our airlines are about as bad as our (terrible) Greyhound buses. Some are even worse than that. I never had that kind of experience abroad.
For international flights, US airlines are better than the horrible domestic flights, but it's still really pathetic when you compare any US airline to any Asian airline. Even the staff on Asian airlines are far better; American staff generally have attitude problems.
Well, Americans have attitude problems (which I say as an American)...
I've never had any problems with American flight attendants, though. Or even the planes. I mostly just want to get there, I bring a book or a programming project, and all I need is a seat. Low expectations, I guess.
That was not my experience flying in China. The staff was bad, the plane was bad and the facilities were retched.
I’ve not done it more than a handful of times so don’t want to say it’s universal but Chinese airlines do not compare favorably to American ones in my limited experience.
Yeah, this is it. Frontier is great if you're flying from something like Las Vegas to Phoenix by yourself and have nothing to carry besides a water bottle and a protein bar in your pocket. Anything else the experience gets wildly unreasonable.
>The low cost carriers I've flown in Western Europe and Asia were way better than the the regular US carriers (United, Delta, Southwest, etc.) They had much better seating, planes, restrooms, policies, etc.
Which carriers exactly? None of these things are true. Most ULCC have thin plastic seats that don't recline, no IFE, no Wi-Fi, paid food and drinks (good luck getting even a cup of water), charging for selecting seats even at check in, same restrooms (they don't choose the restrooms), policies that include steep fees if you have to interact with any staff, draconian adherence to sizes of bags that will clearly fit just fine but they need to make extra money somehow, super thin fleet that is all but guaranteed to leave you stranded if there is IRROPS, flying out of airports with limited amenities located far from civilization, websites and apps that barely work, the list goes on and on.
There are only two benefits: they are cheap and if shit goes wrong, EU261 will compensate you. That's it.
After spending an 11 hour flight recently with the person in front resting gently on my knees for about 9 hours, I'm all for non-reclining seats; Ryanair is into something there.
I've never had this issue as a 6'3" person that's in the 99.9th percentile for miles flown across 30+ different airlines. You must be a giant. For giants, they have economy seats with extra legroom, premium economy, and business class.
I saw a video stating that they couldn't compete once the main carriers introduced "basic economy" and the like, which brought their prices significantly closer to Spirit.
I came across a video a few weeks ago [1] citing gate usage being monopolized by the largest 4 carriers being responsible for low cost carriers not being able to compete.
- Spirit having so many flights out of Florida has hurt them (climate change with heavy storms more common, and ATC staffing particularly bad in Florida, so operations has been harder)
- Leisure travelers have been willing to spend more for luxury travel in the past couple years and Spirit doesn't have a real offering to that market segment
I don't really buy that last one: successful LCCs (Ryanair, AirAsia, etc) know their niche and their audience, and don't even try to compete outside it. Luxury travel has fatter margins but also demands way more overhead in everything (cabin crew, catering, cleaning, etc), so it's not compatible with the rest of the LCC business model, which relies on fast turnaround times and minimal services.
I think luxury is the wrong word. I have a hierarchy of US airlines in my head that guides my domestic airfare purchase decisions and Spirit is at the bottom. American and United are near the bottom too. I never fly first class or business class, so I'm always looking for the least miserable coach ticket. For me, that's Delta, JetBlue and Alaska. I imagine a lot of fliers think the same way and though their own rankings may vary, Spirit is at the top of nobody's list.
And what's the difference is cost anyway? Maybe $40.
@eskibars was specifically talking about luxury. And yes, there are people who will fork out $10000 or $50000 for a 10-hour flight where they get their own little multi-room apartment complete with a shower and free flow champagne.
Lets not forget that Airlines make a ton of their revenue from co-branded credit cards. [1]
Spirit has a credit card from Bank of America [2], but it's terrible outside of the introductory bonus miles offer, which for an airline card gives you a lot of miles for a low intro-spend. Other than that, you get priority boarding and that's about it. No real other perks. I got it, and was probably flying on Spirit more in a few months than any other time in my life because I was traveling last minute to see my late father while in hospice and Spirit was far and away the cheapest flights for next-day flights.
As for status, you have to basically fly weekly roundtrips to get any perks (free bags, etc.) [3]
On top of all that, most business travelers won't take Spirit, and it's often not an option in Concur/Biz travel middleware because companies know the hidden fees so it's often not worth listing for budgeting against known airlines.
