The Low-Cost Carrier Squeeze
Low-cost and ultra-low-cost carriers didn't just win market share — they compressed fares industry-wide, shifted connection patterns, and redrew the competitive map for legacy carriers.
The Question
How much have low-cost carriers (LCCs) actually grown since 2015, what happened to fares on routes where they expanded, and did the network structure — nonstop vs connecting — change as a result?
This matters because LCC entry is one of the strongest competitive signals available in ticket data. Airlines use it for network planning, travelers use it as a proxy for fare environment, and analysts use it to model route profitability.
Building a 10-Year Series with the Tickets API
The tickets/markets/breakdown endpoint supports up to 20 quarters per request. To build a full decade of history, we make three sequential queries and stitch them into a continuous series — each covering a distinct era of the market:
- Chunk 1:
- start_year=2015&start_quarter=1&end_year=2019&end_quarter=4
- Chunk 2:
- start_year=2020&start_quarter=1&end_year=2024&end_quarter=4
- Chunk 3:
- start_year=2025&start_quarter=1&end_year=2025&end_quarter=4
Chunk 3 crosses the DB1B→DB1C transition (Jul 2025). The API automatically normalizes DB1C's 40% sample down to DB1B's 10% scale for a continuous series.
LCC Market Share & Fare Trend
The chart below stitches all three query windows into a single 10-year series. The LCC share line tracks Southwest, Spirit, Frontier, JetBlue, Allegiant, Breeze, Sun Country, and Virgin America (VX, historical). The legacy line tracks American, Delta, United, and Alaska.
LCC vs Legacy Carrier Share & Average Fare — 2015 to 2025
Quarterly, top-15 carriers per period · DB1B 2015–mid-2025, DB1C normalized from Jul 2025
/tickets/markets/breakdown?by=opcarrier · Stitched across 3 query windowsWhat the data shows: LCC share was between 43.64% and 48.79% in 2018–2019, then ranged 43.86% to 45.95% in 2022–2023. Over that same 2022–2023 period, average LCC fares stayed 42.0% to 45.5% below legacy fares. That persistent gap — not just one carrier’s pricing — is the competitive pressure airlines call “LCC pricing discipline.”
Fare Pressure on Specific Routes
Market-share data shows the aggregate. Route-level data shows the mechanism. For three routes where LCC entry was meaningful — ORD→LAS, DEN→LAX, and MCO→ORD — we compare legacy and LCC average fares across two eras: 2015–2019 and 2022–2024.
- Routes queried:
- ORD→LAS, DEN→LAX, MCO→ORD
- Each route:
- 3 query windows (2015–2019, 2020–2024, 2025)
The origin and destination filters are IATA airport codes. Passenger volumes at the route level are much smaller than system-wide, so the 10% DB1B sample may produce counts of a few thousand per quarter — accurate for fare analysis but not capacity planning.
Route Fare Before vs After LCC Expansion — Dumbbell Chart
Average fare by carrier class: 2015–2019 era vs 2022–2024 era · weighted by passenger volume
/tickets/markets/breakdown?by=opcarrier&origin=…&destination=… · 3 routes × 3 query windowsThe dumbbell chart compares era averages. An upward shift from the left (hollow) dot to the right (filled) dot means fares rose between eras. A downward shift means compression. The color of the connecting line indicates direction.
Across these three routes, fares rose in nominal terms from 2015–2019 to 2022–2024 for both carrier groups, but the LCC discount remained substantial. In 2022–2024, LCC fares were still about half of legacy on ORD→LAS and MCO→ORD, and roughly one-third lower on DEN→LAX.
Network Structure: The Nonstop Shift
LCCs operate overwhelmingly point-to-point. Their growth should increase the nonstop share of domestic coupons. The tickets/coupons/breakdown endpoint lets us test this directly by comparing all coupons versus nonstop-only coupons.
- Two parallel queries:
- One without filter (total coupons) · One with
nonstop=true - Derived metric:
- nonstop_pct = nonstop_passengers / total_passengers × 100
Coupon data counts individual flight legs, not itineraries. A connecting itinerary with two legs generates two coupons. The nonstop filter keeps only single-leg segments, making this a measure of point-to-point traffic vs itineraries with connections.
Nonstop vs Connecting Traffic Share — 2015 to 2025
Quarterly coupon-level data · nonstop coupons as % of all coupons among top-15 carriers
/tickets/coupons/breakdown?by=opcarrier with and without nonstop=true