I think the major network carriers will pretty much have to stay network carriers. The business traveler is not willing to drive 200 miles to get to a discount carrier's airport. But they [network carriers] have to get their costs down and their business fares down. And if they don't, there won't be as many network carriers. |
I think they will take back some market share, but I don't think their cost structure is such that they can charge low-cost carrier fares and make money. |
I think we've entered a new phase. I don't think we've reached the saturation point yet. But while they will try to avoid each other, it'll be harder to do. |
People have known about the challenge of the low-cost carrier for at least a decade. The major airlines did not have an answer. Instead they went about raising fares on the routes where the low-cost competition didn't exist. That was a game that would have caught up with them sooner or later, with or without 9/11. |
The fares are never going to go back up to where they were. The shrinking of networks will not allow them to raise fares back where they were. The low cost carriers will be the check on that. |
The No. 1 problem [for United] is the hub and spoke model isn't working in the post dot.com and post 9/11 era. The networks are a good thing, and they're here to stay. But they cost a lot of money to run, and the industry has to do some things to get the networks more efficient. The business model for hub and spoke got out of whack because during the dot.com bubble, they were raising fares because they could and they didn't do the things they needed to do. |