Whippersnapper
Don't forget that EZY and Ryan are their own big problems at the moment, and both may end up having to drop significant numbers of routes. This will give some headway for niche providers.
I'm not sure I follow your logic. Ryanairs "problems " are that they may have to start paying more money to use some of the airports where they have enjoyed "artificial" subsidies (allegedly
). Easyjets "problems" is difficulty in raising average yield over a 12 month period, resulting in a drop in profits as costs have increased.
It doesn't follow that either of these operators will drop routes ( especially profitable ones) for any reason. If they drop routes at all, it will because they can't get the economics to work...and surely that would be a good reason for any else attempting to run a low cost operation to avoid them.
The Low Cost Model relies on 2 things , Volume and Cash. Lot and Lots of people paying small amounts of money up front. It's a simple formula. If want an insight, read Barabara Cassani's book, and see how much GO lost before they bounced back...because they got the volume up. Somewhere between 15 to 20 aircraft is about right as a starting point.
Of the so called "Start-ups" out there all of them ( bar 1- the title of this thread) are bolt-on operations to an already existing operation, so the true costs and profits will be lost in the Group detail. It will be impossible to determine if any of them are making money in their own right. Only NOW will ( assuming it gets up an running) will be a truly independent operation, and will have one serious challenge in the existing marketplace to gain a strong enough foothold to grow to the level required to show sustained profits.