Will the legacy carriers be the next designer brands?

Air traffic has doubled every 15 years and it is expected to continue at the same exponential rate of growth over the next decade. However in economy class over the last 10 years, the legacy carriers have inexorably lost market share in the short-haul market to the LCC (Low Cost Carriers) who are now taking on the legacy carriers on the long-haul market as well. On the other hand, upper classes have largely remained the realm of the legacy carriers with most of them earning over half their revenue from upper class customers while the economy class with 75% to 80% of the seats and about half the space capacity generates less than half, in some cases as little as a third of the revenue. It is also reasonable to assume that, given the market conditions and the marginal profitability of legacy carriers, the economy class is sustained by the more profitable upper class.

Legacy airlines in upheaval: Keep or ditch the economy class?

AirAsia in Thailand

Conventional wisdom says that the LCC (Low Cost Carrier) model only works for short-haul flights and cannot compete with the legacy carriers for the long-haul business. But most legacy carriers know full well that it is only a matter of time until they are challenged by the LCC on the long-haul. Already AirAsia X and Norwegian are demonstrating that conventional wisdom is wrong and that the LCC model is not limited to the short-haul business. Lufthansa is toying with the idea of creating a long-haul LCC to South-East Asia and India in addition to its regional Eurowings and its low-cost Germanwings. With Norwegian now offering low-cost service to Bangkok from northern Europe, it is obvious that Lufthansa would stand to lose some of their economy business to Norwegian.