An interesting report from the ELFAA and York Aviation titled European Low Fares Airline Association: Forecasting the Market Share of Low Fares Airlines in Europe.
its only 15 pages and well worth the read. But I will challenge the presumed results.
What the report fails to acknowledge is the maturity of the Southwest Model. Also it fails to consider that there will be a capacity constraint problem in Europe. It also doesn't give any allowance for the opening of the European market to non-EU based carriers.
With Stansted Airport - Europe's largest Low Fare airport experiencing traffic declines - these numbers may be hard to sustain. But in my view this discounts entirely the hyrbidization of the airlines - particularly Easyjet and Norwegian. I predict that by 2020 Easyjet will be a legacy looking carrier with full service amenities just like jetBlue and to some extent Southwest have become in the USA. Norwegian will have also LONG HAUL flights as it has purchased at least 2 787s.
Further I believe that Ryanair cannot continue to expand using secondary airports and therefore must adopt some full service ancillary service capability. Indeed just like Southwest has experienced in the USA market.
I believe that we will have had a total breakdown of the legacy GDS model and a replacement of so many options of distribution that there will be a whole new class of Air Find services. More implicit than explicit type interfaces.
Finally I predict that the long shadow of Emirates and to a lesser extent the other Gulf carriers and the removal of competitive barriers will mean a great deal of additional competition of different characteristics. We can look to the EK Trans Tasman flight extensions as a model for increased competition inside Europe. Of course this assumes that the legacy EU carriers are not successful in bringing barriers to entry through regulation.
Food for thought.
Cheers
Discovery Channel showed one episode of low fare flights, they were saying that everyone will be flying everywhere sooner or later. For traveler like me, it is a good change!
ReplyDeleteProfessor,
ReplyDeleteI would be especially interested in hearing more of your thoughts on your comment:
"I believe that we will have had a total breakdown of the legacy GDS model and a replacement of so many options of distribution that there will be a whole new class of Air Find services."
Thank you John.
ReplyDeleteBy 2020 the legacy GDS model will be consigned to history. There is compelling evidence from many sides that this will occur fairly rapidly but in my view that the exact time line is not the issue. That it will happen is inevitable.
The process of explicit search too I believe is coming to an end. The emergence of new (and not travel specific) "Find" solutions akin to conventional retail shopping online will drive better solutions for the whole experience and air in particular.
True merchandising vs the unbundling will also take hold and will be perfectly normal by 2020.
Raising the bar... and about time too.