DumboDrop

And that's why the "European model" isn't going to work. We aren't Europeans and we as a culture expect good customer service as the baseline of doing business. As posted above, it looks like people will pay a lot more to avoid the ULCC experience.

planejoe

People are voting with their wallets and the results are in. Frontier response: Double down on ULCC some more.

CGLimits

Yeah Europeans as a culture expect crappy service…🤔? There are laws in the EU that protect consumers way more than here. European airlines wouldn’t be able to get away with the kind of crap that BB has gotten away with.

BobSacamano

It’s not like Europeans are necessarily more accepting of terrible customer service. One thing that’s got to be confronted is the fact that ULCC costs within the EU are likely lower than those faced by US ULCCs.

Wages: generally lower at Euro ULCCs.

Airport costs: generally lower because Euro ULCCs can serve secondary airports to a greater degree than do US carriers. E.g, it’s much cheaper to serve London via Gatwick, Stansted or Luton. Barcelona? Try Girona. Rome? Ciampino. Vienna? Nope, Bratislava. Meanwhile F9 has to deal with LGA if it wants to serve NYC because nobody can make it work at Islip. And that’s not cheap. F9 even serves SFO, SEA, DCA… not cheap to operate in. F9 tries places like ONT and TTN but those are niches and I don’t think they get a ton of flights.

Competitive landscape: probably better for Euro ULCCs than US. Euro legacies have their conglomerates (IAG, Lufthansa Group, KLM Air France) but I don’t think any of those have dominant intra-EU networks approaching what the Big 4 have within the US. That plays a big role in why Ryanair has come to dominate.

flyingpants

True, lower cost does not mean lower quality. I’ve used the LCC/ULCC in Europe and I would do it again and again. You get a good service at a low price and most importantly you get treated like a human being, which is what most passengers complain about F9.

Aero1900

Thanks for the information.

This is what I thought was going on. I need to put some thought as to the lower ticket prices. Obviously Frontier thinks they needed to lower the fares to bring in the passengers. Is it a true softening of demand? Is Barry right that we as the lowest cost option, really are a canary in the coal mine? Have the ULCCs just added to much capacity too quickly? Have the legacies built too strong of a loyalty base with the credit cards/ mileage programs? Has our carry on baggage debacle turned enough people away that we had to drop tix prices to keep the filling the planes?

Spirit is doing even worse than us. I just can't believe that the ULCC model isn't doing better. Honestly. People shop on price. Im struggling to understand why we are both having to lower ticket prices when the legacies are so expensive. Tix on United/ Delta are frequently prohibitively expensive for families and yet here we are.....

Twr199

Credit card debt is at an all time high so that should answer your question. The pax will be back once the cards are declined.

Njflyguy

Have you seen the TikTok's of life on a Ryan Air flight? Or looked at the reddit subthread chock full of vitriol?

Yabadaba

I don’t think we are disliked any more or less than Ryanair or EasyJet. People will buy cheap then complain about it everywhere. These seats are much easier to tolerate on a short hop in Europe than PHX-MCO though.

TOGALOCK

If they don’t have money to buy plane tickets because their cards are being decline, they won’t have money to travel either. Buying a budget fare on Frontier isn’t going to change that. Maybe people will shop that budget fare to go to grandma’s funereal or to that college friend’s bachelor(ette) party, but that’s a small percentage of travel.

When you’re broke, you’re broke. A recession and credit card default isn’t going to safe F9.