Future of the LCC model and Career Progression as a Regional Pilot
Posted by pilotguy981@reddit | flying | View on Reddit | 20 comments
Hey guys,
I’m currently a First Officer at a Regional Airline. I’m around 2,500 TT and I’m currently sitting on CJO’s for Breeze and Frontier… however things aren’t looking great for the LCC model.
From 2020 - 2025
> Frontier has lost 427 Million dollars
> Jet Blue has lost 3.6 Billion Dollars
> Spirit lost 3.94 Billion before dissolving
> Allegiant has lost 205 million dollars
> Breeze has only had one profitable quarter since its founding 5 years ago.
Apart from Southwest and Sun Country, the LCC model seems to be doing… awful.
As a Regional Pilot the next step to me seems like it would be a LCC, so that I could fly more routes on a bigger aircraft, however it seems like it’s just too risky. I’m not sure how investors in some of these companies have a good outlook. 5 years is a long time to hold a net loss.
I’m working on my degree currently and I’m bidding for the first available upgrade, however that is 2 years away currently.
If you were in my shoes would you stay put and upgrade or would you take the risk of jumping to something that may or may not improve?
Ideally I’d rather be at a LCC than my Regional.
Electronic-Click-344@reddit
There’s only one correct answer to this- stay and upgrade. That is by far the best and safest option.
Or you could roll the dice, go against the popular opinion, and live life with a little risk. I would only advise this if you could see yourself staying at the LCC. Many, many people have regretted going LCC, others like myself, couldn’t be happier to have switched to an LCC.
There’s no “one size fits all” in this industry, there are certainly best and safest options, but only you know what your goals are in this career.
Is this terrible advice? Maybe, that’s only for you to decide. But I think we rely too much on what strangers have to say on the internet.
pilotguy981@reddit (OP)
Great advice! What are the major complaints you see for folks who swapped and didn’t like it?
Electronic-Click-344@reddit
Biggest things are commuting- don’t, especially for LCCs (and regionals imo)
And guys who hoped a resume wash is all they needed, and feel like they slowed their progress, which they probably did, because they could have upgraded to in their regional sooner.
Reason why I ignored the masses is that I’m most concerned with living in base somewhere I WANTED and LCC gave me that best option. I also don’t have any interest in flying wide body, but really just wanted to settle somewhere I’d be happy with if the music stops soon.
MeatServo1@reddit
As a regional FO, the next step is regional captain. PIC time in a 121 is superior to kore FO time at an LCC. Ask all the regional FOs who went to spirit how that worked out for them. If you have >1000 121 PIC, you have options, but you don’t.
pilotguy981@reddit (OP)
🫡 I will report back when i get my upgrade on 3 years!! lol!
Sleep_Holiday@reddit
Post should be locked after this comment in all honestly.
PWJT8D@reddit
Stay the course until you get an offer at a legacy/swa. Playing hide the salami at different carriers is not an effective strategy.
discgolfpilot@reddit
LCC in the US.. This all IMO.
The business model is based on getting capital and trying to squeeze into a market. Creat enough disruption that legacys make some adjustments. While doing this try to get as many gates and slots as possible. They survive for a time with low seniority crews and staff at the bottom of the pay scales. Then hope w legacy or different LCC buys them out.
Pilots hate to hear it but so much of the revenue stream for the big 3 and even WN is credit card miles and deals. LCC but their business model are not doing to attract credit card spend. Be it from income or non frequent travelers. Also they do not have the network or gates that allow any code sharing or alliances with international travel.
They will keep popping up. When fuel prices are lower they will post record profits with lower paid employees (mostly because they are newer) and generally they fly newer aircraft or well maintained leased aircraft. The big reason they do that is less AOGs as an aircraft being unavailable is a lager disruption to the business model. Wall street will get all excited prop them up. Fonders cash in.
Then a cycle of some combination of a downturn in the economy and less vacation fliers, fuel prices going up, new contracts for flight and mx crews. And the house of cards blows over.
Unless some finds away to create a LCC airline that can create both a credit card income stream and a network that connects them to international travel in some way they will continue to pop up. Make some noise and collapse in on themselves
Necessary_Use_4729@reddit
Allegiant’s losses have largely come from their disaster sunseeker hotel ambition that didn’t work out.
Several-Village5814@reddit
And they still don't even pay their pilots a living wage
andrewrbat@reddit
Guess thats how they stay afloat 😬
Several-Village5814@reddit
Yea that’s my point if they had to increase wages by 50% and 401k to DEC that would cost them a ton of money along with current jet fuel prices
andrewrbat@reddit
Shit business model then lol
Several-Village5814@reddit
No one is making you stay at allegiant
Adonde_Cuh@reddit
Wait til you guys see this TA. It’s terrible
Necessary_Use_4729@reddit
Yeah that’s a whole separate issue that’s been going on for too long.
mduell@reddit
Outside of exceptional items like the GTF debacle, the (U)LCC biz model faces a number of challenges in the US market that make it hard to achieve actually low costs:
Allegiant's losses are largely non-aviation, they seem to have found a model that works at some scale.
Delicious_Suspect_49@reddit
I believe the ULCC business model can work, but not as much as people think. They offer relatively fast turnarounds and low operating costs. Low turnarounds affect the business to the extent it allows them to make more trips in a day. Low operating costs help make trips affordable to generally vacationers. In this way, the routes that matter are relatively short haul routes (because you get more flights per day out of a plane) that connect people to vacation destinations.
Some of them made a mistake, which I suspect was linked to them pursuing growth so they could bump up the stock price by investors who don't "get" the fundamentals of this approach. That growth pushes them beyond those core flight segments where they have an advantage against the big guys (who prioritize things differently, such as route frequency to serve business needs, etc.) and into segments where flight duration is too long and the turnaround time matters less. If you're doing a 2 hour flight, a quicker turnaround matters more. If you just take a hypothetical estimate of 1 hour, then you can see it's 50% of the flight time and you're paying for every minute of it through staff costs, maybe airport fees that charge by the minute, and unused plane time more generally. If you are doing a 12 hour international flight, you can see whether it's a 1 or 2 hour turnaround matters less in terms of how big of a savings you can create. They create those savings by charging more for carry on bags than other airlines, the incent you to check bags in instead of carry on (wastes time), and so on. They also cram more seats in, because vacation goers are more willing to sacrifice on that journey to get to where they want to go.
If I were looking to work at a ULCC, I would ask them how well they get these fundamentals of where a ULCC can exceed. I would also ask if they have good, disciplined, route selection or if they're duking it out for pennies (actually huge losses) against incumbent ULCCs.
I think ULCCs have a fundamental role, but it's a smaller part of the market than people are wiling to accept, at least in today's environment (this excludes how things might change 25 years from now with autonomous VTOL aircraft).
Maybe I'm wrong and would invite anyone's input.
Weasel474@reddit
They also excel at connecting smaller destinations with less frequent services. Someone going from Charleston to Fort Lauderdale for their brief, rare vacation would love to just go in one shot instead of sitting in Atlanta for three hours. The point-to-point system works great in those examples, but not when you're trying to do the scale of the legacies or adding on long-haul international connections (good luck getting enough people to fill an A330 from Grand Rapids to Madrid).
There's absolutely a market for it, and it can work out rather well, but it's just not enough to exist at legacy scale.
rFlyingTower@reddit
This is a copy of the original post body for posterity:
Hey guys,
I’m currently a First Officer at a Regional Airline. I’m around 2,500 TT and I’m currently sitting on CJO’s for Breeze and Frontier… however things aren’t looking great for the LCC model.
From 2020 - 2025
> Frontier has lost 427 Million dollars
> Jet Blue has lost 3.6 Billion Dollars
> Spirit lost 3.94 Billion before dissolving
> Allegiant has lost 205 million dollars
> Breeze has only had one profitable quarter since its founding 5 years ago.
Apart from Southwest and Sun Country, the LCC model seems to be doing… awful.
As a Regional Pilot the next step to me seems like it would be a LCC, so that I could fly more routes on a bigger aircraft, however it seems like it’s just too risky. I’m not sure how investors in some of these companies have a good outlook. 5 years is a long time to hold a net loss.
I’m working on my degree currently and I’m bidding for the first available upgrade, however that is 2 years away currently.
If you were in my shoes would you stay put and upgrade or would you take the risk of jumping to something that may or may not improve?
Ideally I’d rather be at a LCC than my Regional.
Please downvote this comment until it collapses.
Questions about this comment? Please see this wiki post before contacting the mods.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. If you have any questions, please contact the mods of this subreddit.