Group Project

3a. Since the 1990s the EU have been able to encourage the expansion of low cost carriers (LCCs). The EU has done this by offering cheap flights to customers with exchange for eliminating many passenger services. This has managed to attract customers and this allowed LCCs to successfully compete with other major airline industries such as British Airways. Many customers did seem more concerned about the cheap flights rather then the service they receive and this enabled the EU to expand LCCs. LCCs contain “low operating costs.- low wages, low air fees; low costs for maintenance; reduced unemployment (with much lower rates of number of passengers per employer); cockpit training and standby crews due to homogenous fleet; high resource productivity ; short ground waits due to simple boarding processes, no air freight, no hub services, short cleaning times”.[1] Clearly the LCCs have many positives but have a few negatives because customers will have a few passenger services eliminated. However the cheap flights appeared to be good enough to attract many customers and the EU were able to encourage the expansion during the 1990s.
The EU has reduced costs for the LCCs by “paying low prices at the airports because they often operate between remote places and achieve favourable conditions for airport services. LCC carry out point to point flights. Consequently there are no costs for baggage administration and direction to connecting flights. At the moment LCC own primarily aircrafts of the newest generation. They go with higher fuel efficiency and have lower repair costs. They often use one type of aircraft which makes the maintenance much less costly. Services are reduced to a minimum (no food, drinks, newspapers; internet booking etc” [2] Clearly these methods of reducing costs have been beneficial for LCCs and they have made them a major force in the