In recent years the "low fare" airline has come to dominate the airline industry news. As it turns out this has had several consequences. The most obvious result is the current affordability of air travel for most middle class families and individuals. That has drastically changed the demographics of the passengers. Certainly the middle class families that saved to fly and see Grandma seem to make up a large portion of the flying public today and their frequency of travel has increased. Now the groups who would have never considered the ability to fly will save up and fly to visit Grandma. This has intensified the number of angry passengers who feel that they are paying good money and deserve something. Don't believe me? Just watch "Airline" on A&E with their coverage of Southwest passengers. Southwest is of course the airline that pioneered the low fare, no-frills, airline. They have maintained profitability where others have failed but air travel will never be the same. You can always tell which people fly often and know that this time they will have to put up with the insanity the "low fare" creates.
Some might say that it is far too easy to split people into groups and we are certainly all guilty of classification based on preconceived notions. I for one am grateful for the low fare trend especially when it come to convenient and reasonably priced travel between Boston, Long Beach, Oakland, and Washington DC. Those just so happen to be the cities I travel to. I don't know if that is because JetBlue flies there or if I want to fly there and JetBlue has obliged.
Speaking of JetBlue, there is an airline that gets what today's price conscious but feature focused consumer wants. I am loyal for now. The only thing that could sway me is the launch of Virgin America (that assumes of course that I can afford to fly them).
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