The Rise of the Low-Cost Airline: A Threat to Legacy Carriers?

Recently, the latest brainchild of the Virgin conglomerate known as Virgin America began its debut service. Currently, Virgin America is based out of San Francisco's airport, and offers service to places including Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C. Virgin America also claims to have rates much lower then the airfare of other, more well-known US Carriers. Please know that I am not attempting to advertise Virgin America in any way. Rather, I'm using them as a way to inform you about how airlines such as Jetblue, Frontier and Southwest, alongside Virgin America, are each providing lower costs and better service then many of the famed Legacy Carriers: American, Delta, United, US Airways, and the many US Airlines that follow the Legacy Carrier way.

It began on September 11^th. Everything changed after that. With all the new security regulations, insane TSA agents, and other issues, Legacy carriers starting making tons of sacrifices, valuing efficiency over comfort. Flying on any US airline literally felt like flying on a massive bus.

Over the last few years, the Legacy Carriers have taken a turn for the worst in several areas, such as Customer Service, Scheduling, as well as conditions of flying in the tin cans. United in particular has a website created by people against the airline dedicated to exposing the problems within the corporation. Many passengers often complain that they are compared to cattle when flying in one of their airlines. In fact, US Airways just recently canceled 530 flights out of their hub in Philadelphia, leaving one group of travelers stranded on a plane with an overflowing toilet. Airlines: They just ain't what they used to be.

The Rise of the Low-Cost Carrier