In May I attended the Americas Low Cost Carriers (LCC) congress in USA, where Indra was one of the principal sponsors and I had the chance to meet Spirit Airlines Senior Management, US ULCC (Ultra Low Cost Carrier).

They shared with some of their cost cutting initiatives, some related to office management like electricity consumption control, office and IT material cuts, and some operational ones like: minimum turn-around time, maximum load factor, good slots management, yield management..., but what really struck me is that they told me that their biggest competitor is not Southwest airlines, but Greyhound buses company. They are offering Miami-Niagara tickets for aprox 40 USD (less than 3 hours flight), where Greyhound is 50 USD (23 hours trip).

The aviation industry its reinventing itself in the past years, year after year. USA is the biggest aviation market in the world, and a very mature market, pioneer in Low Cost Carrier business model (Southwest started in the early 70s), this model was successfully replicated decades after in Europe (Ryanair, Easyjet), Brazil (GOL) and Asia Pacific (Jetstar), among other worldwide regions, now is creating a new business model in aviation market, the ULCC.

ULCC are here to stay to create a new market niche and to once again push the airline business to re-invent.