'Ultra low cost carriers' - redefining low cost?

[KeithMEL]

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fi-ch...tot-topstories

Airline ticket: $10; pillow: $15

Ultra-low-cost carriers cut freebies to keep fares low. Some flight attendants are paid partly on commission.

By Peter Pae, Times Staff Writer
May 29, 2007

How low can airfares go?

Try $10 for a one-way ticket from Burbank to Columbus, Ohio. Or $9 from Los Angeles International Airport to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Better yet, there is a 1-cent fare for flights from LAX to Guatemala.

Yes, those are actual fares offered by a new generation of carriers that are redefining budget travel by taking "low-cost, no-frills" service to new heights.

Such as $15 for a pillow. Or two bucks for water. Don't want a middle seat? You can pay $10 and you can jump ahead of the line to board a Skybus Airlines plane.

...

[YK@HKG]

[jhm]

Not sure this is anything new, e.g. I understand FR have been offering fares (including taxes) of 1p recently! You have to pay for water on board but you can't buy a pillow even if you wanted to! U2 have priority boarding at a cost - not sure about FR.

[KeithMEL]

Well it's an LA Times story so I think it's a new phenomenon in the US. There's a sentence somewhere in the middle of the article acknowledging that fact. Carriers like Jetblue and Southwest would be known as New World Carriers in the rest of the world, like Vueling, Virgin Blue etc.