I think you are mixing up the concept.
Being a "low cost carrier" refers to the COST structure, not the FARE structure.
Any airline can be a "low fare" airline. The moment a marketing department at a legacy airline decides to match fares of a LCC, it becomes a "low fare" airline. The results speak for themselves.
If you recall, every sched airline in Canada that has tried to match WJ's FARES since 1996 has failed/collapsed/merged/voluntarily shutdown and then failed, (CanJet1 , CanJet2, Vistajet, Royal, C3000, JetsGo, Canadian, Roots, Harmony, Greyhound etc), or has had to go into CCAA. There have been NO exceptions.
As it stands today, even with leather seats, live TV and operations into YYZ, Westjet's costs to fly a seat a mile, standardized to a 900 mile average flight length remain about 40% below anyone they compete with.
The other proof is in the pudding. No one makes the kind of margins Westjet makes in Canada. No one is even close. That is why they keep on expanding and expanding, which continues to drive down their fixed cost base, causing the cost gap to get wider and wider and wider.
