What airlines will be around in 25 years time?
 

25 years from now will be 2041. What airlines will be around?

If we look at 25 years ago, that was 1991. Some airlines around were....

Pan Am
Northwest
Continental (still alive now and called United)
America West (still alive now and called American)
Aloha
American Trans
Braniff (3)
Midway

In 25 years we'll all be travelling by rocketships which no current airlines can afford.

Spirit will be huge. Just gotta get those A380's certified to carry 1,500 people.

With a 5 foot ceiling height you could fit three levels on the plane, high density seating on each level would give you 1,407 seats using the same layout EK has in coach on their A380's...

At the risk of swerving into bad OMNI, from a US point of view, it all depends upon whether the US gets more or less protectionist. With the former, there will be a handful of essentially domestic carriers and some state-sponsored international carriers who carry government employees and the handful of unfortunates who have to fly a US carrier. With the latter, the US market will have mostly Spirit type operations with perhaps a couple of (probably foreign owned) airlines offering a significantly better experience.

The US will likely be down to three or four majors and two or three VLCCs.

Today: UA, DL, AA, WN, AS (+VX), B6, HA, G4, F9, NK, SY.

2041: DL, AA, WN, (AS+B6+HA), (NK+F9+G4).

What happens to UA in your example?

Who knows... who cares...

It decided to stop operating flights, choosing to focus 100% of its efforts on signing people up for credit cards.

Laughed way too hard at that. It's the truth though. A couple summers ago I had a ~3.5 hour layover at ORD so after grabbing lunch I decided to walk from T3 over to the neon tunnel to stretch my legs. There was a card peddler that wouldn't take no for an answer even after I told him only AA serves our airport and the closest airport to my house that UA flies to is 110 miles away.

Virgin America will dominate in 2041

They optimize for their skills and go all-cargo.

Or, more likely, they are hammered in the next recession and by an oil price spike, keep cutting stations and shrinking the system to compete (drawing down IAD and DEN circa 2025), but never recover enough premium traffic or brand stature. They never resolve the labor strife that has plagued UA since the '80s, either.

Around 2030, with the unions calling for the ouster of their 14th CEO in a row, activist shareholders finally insist on an asset breakup / auction of assets to get their money out. WN and B6 split the domestic operations and B6 gets the TATL routes, AA gets the Pacific, WN goes big into Latam.

It would be fun to write an alternate history of UA 2016-2035.

Really, it's impossible to say for sure. There are so many mergers, bankruptcies, and rebrands..especially these days..that i couldn't even tell you who will still be around in 3 years.

Now, heavily subsidized national carriers like Air Canada, Air France, Lufthansa and SAS will probably stick around. But as to the American carriers, who knows?

A big factor is oil price stability, which we most certainly won't have. Fuel hedges worked for Southworst for awhile, but that can backfire if prices go down.

On the positive side, I think the market is expanding. More people are flying than ever before, and I would expect to see an emergence of more carriers. Probably LCC's, but some may be full service airlines.

That'll definitely drive substantial growth in China, India, and a few other places.

Wonder if the percentage of people flying in the U.S. will remain as high as it is today between lack of airline competition and a middle class that will probably continue to hollow out. It will depend a lot on ULCC's, I guess.

The Imperator-Premier of the North American Union will have merged all the major airlines in 2035, forming North American Skyways. Citizens are able to fly anywhere for no more than $50,000 AME (Ameros), equivalent to $50 USD in 2016. This is accomplished by having passengers lay down in cavernous A380s that have no seats. Pax are sedated for the duration of their flight. Citizens who complain about the quality of NAS compared to Pan-Asian Airways or United Levantine Airlines are exiled to the Mars colony for hard labor.