Low Cost Flyers Continue to Thrive

Despite reservations from the airline industry generally, the low cost flyers business model continues to do well, especially when compared to the major international carriers who have all seen major reductions in revenue and operating margins during the current recession.
The general consensus was that without slots at the major airports and a strong balance sheet the low cost flyer would soon fizzle out.
The key to their success has been to establish themselves away from the major airports and locate themselves at local airports where the cost of operation was lower and closer to their target customers.
Having secured cheaper domestic hubs to fly from they then went one step further and looked at for new destinations once again using cheaper airports with lower landing charges.
In some cases, local governments and towns wet as far as providing financial incentives to these airlines to attract tourism to their area.
With cheaper operational costs these airlines were able to pass a proportion of these savings onto their customers resulting in very high seat occupancy levels.
Also when establishing a new route they would shrewdly analyse the number of people who had emigrated from a certain country and where that density was considered high enough establish a route to that country from a nearby airport at a much lower cost than being offered by schedule airlines at an airport some distance from there homes.
Their target market was the holidaymaker, weekend tripper and businessmen from smaller companies on a tighter budget travelling short to medium distances with 4 hours being at upper end of the scale in Europe.
The economic climate if anything as pushed more travellers their way with holidaymakers looking for cheaper holidays which tend to be in this distance range and businessmen opting to use these airlines due to cost.