Ultralow-cost air service in the transatlantic market has
evolved from near nonexistence a decade ago into a significant force today. But
at the CAPA Americas Aviation Summit in Houston this month, a cross section of
industry experts disagreed about whether the model can survive.
Brian Havel, an aviation lawyer who teaches at Montreal's
McGill University, said, "I always begin with the question: If the
operation is so good, why isn't Ryanair doing it?"
According to Peter Harbison, CEO of the CAPA Centre for
Aviation, an Australia-based airline industry research and market analysis
company, there were just two U.S.-to-continental Europe routes being flown on
an ultralow-cost model in 2008. Today, there are 130.
Similarly, during that same period the number of
ultralow-cost routes from the U.S. to the U.K. has jumped from one to 22.
Leading the charge has been Norwegian Air, which began
serving the U.S. in 2013 and this summer will fly approximately 60 routes to 14
U.S. destinations.
In Norwegian's wake, Icelandic budget carrier Wow Air
entered the U.S. market in 2015 and will fly to Reykjavik from 13 U.S. airports
this summer with connecting service to the rest of Europe. Another independent
discount carrier, Primera Air, launched transatlantic service this month.
Meanwhile, major European airline groups have responded by
launching their own low-cost transatlantic brands. IAG, parent of British
Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling, created the ultralow-cost Level last
year, and Lufthansa began U.S. service with its low-cost unit, Eurowings, in
2016.
Speaking at the CAPA Americas conference, Harbison was
bullish about the future of discount transatlantic service.
"Low-cost travel. That is the growth market," he
said.
Partially driving Harbison's confidence was IAG's
announcement earlier this month that it was interested in acquiring Norwegian
and that it had already purchased 4.61% of the Scandinavian carrier.
"The fact that [IAG CEO] Willie Walsh saw this was the
way of the future, for somebody who is very strategic, that to me was very important,"
Harbison said.
Other speakers shared Harbison's confidence in the transatlantic
ultralow-cost model.
"There's a need for more capacity, whether it's a
Norwegian, a Level or Joon," said Carlos Ozores, principal of the
consultancy ICF Aviation. (Joon is a new offshoot of Air France, but the
airline is not flying U.S. routes.)
Tamur Goudarzi Pour, Lufthansa's vice president of sales for
the Americas, also said the low-cost segment across the transatlantic isn't
likely to go away. But he noted that network carriers have enormous advantages
when it comes to connecting passengers around the globe. The Lufthansa Group,
which is making a substantial push in the low-cost transatlantic market with
Eurowings, offers 10,000 flights a day to 570 destinations. It would take
Norwegian years and years to compete with that, Goudarzi Pour said.
Havel, meanwhile, is skeptical that the long-haul
ultralow-cost model will have the stamina to last. Norwegian, for example, grew
capacity by a prodigious 28% in 2017 and much more than that in the
transatlantic corridor, but it lost $38.5 million in a year when European
airlines recorded profits of nearly $10 billion, thanks to rebounding
economies.
"It is true, you know, that not a single low-cost long-haul
carrier has ever survived a full economic cycle," Havel said.
He referenced Laker Airways, a low-cost transatlantic
airline that grew quickly in the late 1970s only to go bankrupt and cease
flying in 1982 due to an economic slowdown and competitive measures taken by its
legacy competitors.
Norwegian, Havel said, makes margins of 2% to 3% on its
flights. Meanwhile, the low-cost long-haul model suffers compared with the
short-haul discount model when it comes to aircraft utilization. Short-hauls,
Havel argued, can sell an aircraft seat six or seven times per day, while long-hauls
can only sell that same seat twice per day at the most.
"We're making a bunch of fuss over a model that is
never going to be more than 1% or 2% of the transatlantic market," he
said.
Other speakers at the CAPA summit said that the verdict on
the low-cost, long-haul model, at least as it relates to the transatlantic
market, is still out.
"I like it, but they haven't been effective," said
Bill Franke, managing member of Indigo Partners, which owns Frontier and either
owns or is a major shareholder in three international short-haul ultralow-cost
carriers.
Franke said he believes there are U.S.-Europe city pairs
that are ripe for upstart competition because the legacy carriers in those
markets have high load factors and high fares. But he also noted that widebody
aircraft cost approximately three times as much as the narrowbodies that his
short-haul discount carriers fly.
"So now your investment has expanded dramatically, and
you'd better guess right," Franke said.
However, technology, in the form of more fuel-efficient
narrowbodies, has the potential to ease that particular burden for long-haul
discount carriers.
Norwegian, for example, began using the new Boeing 737 Max
last summer on flights connecting Europe with the small East Coast markets of
Providence, R.I.; Hartford, Conn.; and Stewart, N.Y. Several of the routes have
struggled, causing the carrier to either drop them or reduce service.
Still, said Goudarzi Pour, the 737 Max and Airbus A321LR,
which Airbus says will enter service late this year, will play a key role in
shaping long-haul markets.
"That is going to be a game-changer, just by the
technology," he said.