The LCC boom began about 36 years ago when Southwest Airlines roam the skies of USA. Rollin King and Herb Kelleher got together and decided to start a different kind of airline with four set of principles: fly one type of aircraft to keep down engineering costs; keep overheads down; turnaround aircraft as quickly as possible; and abandon loyalty or air miles schemes. They began with one simple notion:
“If you get your passengers to their destinations when they want to get there, on time, at the lowest possible fares and make darn sure they have a good time in doing so, people will fly your airline.”
And you know what? They were right. Southwest Airlines is now the third largest airline in the world in terms of number of passengers carried and also one of the most profitable airlines in the world. Southwest Airline’s success spruced up interest in the LCC concept to all corners of the world. LCC now commands approximately 30% market share of the domestic USA traffic. In Europe, the LCC phenomenon spread much later with Ryanair in 1991, but the growth has been at a much faster pace. Southeast Asia embraced the LCC concept last, but the growth trajectory is the fastest. The LCC concept continued to spread throughout the world with WestJet in Canada in 1996, Virgin Blue in Australia in 2000, GOL in Brazil in 2001, AirAsia in Malaysia in 2002, Kulula in South Africa in 2003 and Air Deccan in India in 2004.
The reason for the success of the new low cost carriers is very simple - move the maximum number of passengers at the minimum of cost. The concept of LCC is based on the idea that people would fly a lot more often if it were more affordable. LCC airline’s main mission is to make air travel the most simple, convenient and inexpensive form of transportation in the world. The fare differential between the full service carriers (FSC) and LCC can be as high as 40%-60% cheaper.
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