Death of the Low Cost Airline? Baloney!

April 9, 2008 — -- Doom and gloom, doom and gloom. That's all I've been hearing from the airline pundits in the past week, and I'm tired of it.

To be fair, though, the airline industry has given the pundits a lot to gnash their teeth over in the past week; the Airline Quality Rating study, for example. It highlighted dismal performances by most airlines, in areas that tend to concern consumers the most: on time performance, baggage handling, denied boarding, and customer service. In fact, the study authors say, this past year was the airlines' worst ever.

Then there were all those airlines going bust: Aloha, ATA, Skybus and Skyway (and, lest we forget, a little charter called Champion announced it's going out of business in May).

Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? In fact, some pundits are now proclaiming, "the death of low-cost airlines."

I say, baloney.

First, let's take a look at those going-out-of-business airlines, shall we? We'll start with Aloha; its representatives blamed their woes, mainly it seems, on the "illegal actions of a competitor." While no names were named, it must be pointed out that Aloha — and Hawaiian Airlines — were in a brutal island airfare war with Go Airlines that saw one-way inter-island seats listed for as low as $1. Could it be consumers expecting $1 airfares and $100 a barrel fuel prices didn't mix very well?

Then we have Skybus: it, too, offered incredible deals; I guess you could say, in the long run, these were "impossible deals" at $10 one-way.

ATA said a big issue in its shutdown was the loss of a "key" military contract. Hmm. We're in the midst of a war, and there apparently aren't enough big military contracts to go around. Go figure.

Finally, we come to the little Milwaukee-based commuter, Skyway; yes, I am sorry for my cheese-head friends (and I do use the term with great affection). I will, however, leave it to them to rank this event compared with Brett Favre's retirement.

Here's a final thought: is it possible that, instead of blaming these shutdowns on "the death of low cost airlines," we might better look to these individual airline companies and focus on their business models, or their ability to adapt to change, or even their sheer bad luck? Is it possible these problems had something to do with the demise of these airlines?