Originally Posted by
iahphx
It will be interesting to see what happens to Frontier. I don't think they have the critical mass to survive by themselves, so I guess the most likely outcome is still a sale to Spirit. But Spirit may not be doing too well here, either -- check out their stock price. "Basic Economy," while a bad product for consumers, seems like pure genius to me as a way for the legacies to damage Frontier and Spirit. The next year or so will be critical to see if the USA ULCCs can "deal with" this new competitive threat. I don't think the 99% off sales are the solution. After you've run a few of those, what's left -- totally free flights, where you just pay some ancillary fees?
I've heard at least one story where Ryanair actually priced some tickets below taxes and fees (I remember O'Leary commenting about "paying you to fly with me" and thinking "You probably couldn't pay me enough").
The rub is that Spirit and Allegiant, in particular, suffer from such a thin route network that if things go wrong...boy do they go wrong. I've seen a few stories about folks getting cascaded by multiple days due to a flight cancellation, for example (and there's no real US equivalent to the EU protection that has sort-of kept bad behavior by the ULCCs there in check). If I had to guess, when executed properly this is the biggest threat from Basic Economy products to them: Similar pricing but without the probability of service going to hell in the same way (e.g. a passable chance of being able to get where you need to go if you're on the ball with IRROPS).