Moderators: richierich, ua900, PanAm_DC10, hOMSaR
PatrickZ80 wrote:I always considered them to be a legacy airline, just like JetBlue by the way. There's nothing low-cost or even hybrid about either of them.
As far as I'm concerned Alaska has always been a legacy airline, them joining OneWorld didn't change that.
GalaxyFlyer wrote:Legacy, to my mind, means operated prior to deregulation in the US. AK started in 1944 and was regulated by the CAB.
PatrickZ80 wrote:GalaxyFlyer wrote:Legacy, to my mind, means operated prior to deregulation in the US. AK started in 1944 and was regulated by the CAB.
That doesn't necessarily have to be the case.
For me a legacy airline is an airline that offers an average or higher service level and is priced accordingly. Some people call it a full-service airline but I don't think that term covers it anymore as more and more legacy airlines now charge extra for services that used to be included in the ticket price. Still, a legacy airline is an airline of which you may expect a certain service level.
The deregulation might have made a big change in the US but in the rest of the world it was pretty irrelevant, after all it was only the US that was being deregulated. Still, there are legacy airlines and low-cost airlines outside the US as well. Only the deregulation made it possible for airlines to become anything other than a legacy airline but it was still possible to be a legacy airline after the deregulation.
The first Frontier Airlines was founded in 1950, way before the deregulation. Granted, they went bankrupt in 1986 and restarted in 1994 but still by your definition Frontier would be a legacy airline. Looking at their service level, they're definitely not. And it was only in 2014 that Frontier became an ULCC, before that both the old and the new Frontier were legacy airlines. The new Frontier was basically a continuation of the old one, with many people from the old airline running it.
twicearound wrote:PatrickZ80 wrote:GalaxyFlyer wrote:Legacy, to my mind, means operated prior to deregulation in the US. AK started in 1944 and was regulated by the CAB.
That doesn't necessarily have to be the case.
For me a legacy airline is an airline that offers an average or higher service level and is priced accordingly. Some people call it a full-service airline but I don't think that term covers it anymore as more and more legacy airlines now charge extra for services that used to be included in the ticket price. Still, a legacy airline is an airline of which you may expect a certain service level.
The deregulation might have made a big change in the US but in the rest of the world it was pretty irrelevant, after all it was only the US that was being deregulated. Still, there are legacy airlines and low-cost airlines outside the US as well. Only the deregulation made it possible for airlines to become anything other than a legacy airline but it was still possible to be a legacy airline after the deregulation.
The first Frontier Airlines was founded in 1950, way before the deregulation. Granted, they went bankrupt in 1986 and restarted in 1994 but still by your definition Frontier would be a legacy airline. Looking at their service level, they're definitely not. And it was only in 2014 that Frontier became an ULCC, before that both the old and the new Frontier were legacy airlines. The new Frontier was basically a continuation of the old one, with many people from the old airline running it.
I guess you can make up your own definition but here is the actual technical definition
“A legacy carrier, in the United States, is an airline that had established interstate routes before the beginning of the route liberalization permitted by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and so was directly affected by that Act. Legacy carriers are distinct from low-cost carriers, which, in the United States, are generally new airlines and were started to compete in the newly deregulated industry.”
So the ONLY legacy carriers left in the US are:
Alaska
American
Delta
Hawaiian
United
BoeingERJ1000 wrote:twicearound wrote:PatrickZ80 wrote:
That doesn't necessarily have to be the case.
For me a legacy airline is an airline that offers an average or higher service level and is priced accordingly. Some people call it a full-service airline but I don't think that term covers it anymore as more and more legacy airlines now charge extra for services that used to be included in the ticket price. Still, a legacy airline is an airline of which you may expect a certain service level.
The deregulation might have made a big change in the US but in the rest of the world it was pretty irrelevant, after all it was only the US that was being deregulated. Still, there are legacy airlines and low-cost airlines outside the US as well. Only the deregulation made it possible for airlines to become anything other than a legacy airline but it was still possible to be a legacy airline after the deregulation.
The first Frontier Airlines was founded in 1950, way before the deregulation. Granted, they went bankrupt in 1986 and restarted in 1994 but still by your definition Frontier would be a legacy airline. Looking at their service level, they're definitely not. And it was only in 2014 that Frontier became an ULCC, before that both the old and the new Frontier were legacy airlines. The new Frontier was basically a continuation of the old one, with many people from the old airline running it.
I guess you can make up your own definition but here is the actual technical definition
“A legacy carrier, in the United States, is an airline that had established interstate routes before the beginning of the route liberalization permitted by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and so was directly affected by that Act. Legacy carriers are distinct from low-cost carriers, which, in the United States, are generally new airlines and were started to compete in the newly deregulated industry.”
So the ONLY legacy carriers left in the US are:
Alaska
American
Delta
Hawaiian
United
OK, so they're by definition legacy. Thanks for the information. Regarding Frontier, I'd say they're an exception. They're legacy by definition (despite that period of bankruptcy), but they've changed their service offering/business model.