The end of “low-costs”

The title is a bit provocative, but the question deserves to be asked. Of course, “low-cost” carriers are
not going to disappear, but their product and their way of operating are in line with the methods of
traditional airlines and moreover, the latter have also largely evolved their operation towards the
“low-cost” model. From then on, and at least as far as short and medium-haul flights are concerned,
there will be only one hybrid model for which it would be wise to find a name.

For quite some time now, the difference between the two concepts has tended to shrink. Incumbent
carriers have been quite easy to adopt the Spartan service on board their flights, especially for
economy classes. They have not yet become accustomed to cashing in the additional services on
board, because the flight crews do not want to handle the money, unlike those of the “low-cost”
whose remuneration comes from this source. The density of seats is more or less identical, i.e.
traditional airlines have adopted an increasingly small space between rows in order to squeeze more
and more people on board. It was also a somewhat mandatory response to the reduction in fares in
order to reach the prices posted by the “low-cost”.

The aircraft are identical and the fleets of traditional carriers are modernizing, thus matching the
performance of their competitors. And so it is that the arrival on the market of the latest generation
of twin-engine single-aisle aircraft, which make it possible to carry out much longer flights, such as
transatlantic flights, will further accentuate the uniqueness of the model even on what must be
called long-haul flights.

So what is left to differentiate the two concepts? First of all, there is still a clear difference in the
operation of the aircraft, the “low-cost” are still looking for and rotating more than the traditional
airlines in short and medium-haul flights. To do this, they have to make faster U-turns and sometimes
put online a program so tense that the last flights of the day are very often late. The management of
on-board staff is also different, with “low-cost” workers being paid largely on a performance basis
and with much more restrictive working conditions than those of their colleagues in traditional
carriers. This does not mean, however, that they are not ultimately paid as well as their counterparts.
But in the end, all these differences are fading. And economic results are affected. Regular airlines
have made considerable efforts to improve their financial performance, i.e. they have improved their
performance at a time when prices were tending to rise, including among “low-cost” airlines. Gone
are the miraculous results of the “low-cost” and first of all on the American market. Spirit Airlines
has just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Southwest shareholders are railing about falling profits
at a time when the major U.S. carriers are posting record profits. It is not certain that the same
phenomenon will not occur in Europe and why not in Asia. Basically, the “low-cost”, whose concept
is not so recent, are becoming gentrified, while the “low-cost” are making commendable efforts to
lighten up.

So to become more competitive, the “low-cost” are starting to adopt traditional systems, especially
for their marketing. We now see them entering the classic mode of issuing banknotes in order to be
distributed by the GDS and the BSP traditionally used by the incumbent operators and even enter the
“low-cost” system that they did not want to hear about at any price.
We can see that the rapprochement between the two concepts is being finalized, each copying the
best in the others. As a result, the term “low-cost” has less and less meaning. Who is now going to
find a name to describe the operators of short and medium-haul flights so that the public is aware of
this development?