US based Southwest Airlines and Canada’s WestJet Airlines paved the way for a strong relationship by announcing codeshares starting 2009. Not only will the relationship give customers access to a much larger number of destinations across North America and the Carribean, but the customers of both the airlines would appreciate the seamless brand experience across borders.

Image Credit: gtarded
Both Southwest and WestJet are the leading budget carriers in their respective markets and the alliance has the potential to enhance the brand value of both the airlines due to some key factors. Here are some of these factors.

Greater choice – Just like global alliances of full-service airlines allow passengers access to routes not flown by a specific airline, but a partner carrier, this partnership will give customers of budget airlines in North America the same conveniences for the first time. Furthermore, like Tiger Airways in Asia and Air Berlin in Europe, this alliance will allow passengers to take multi-leg budget flights too.
One size fits all – Both Southwest and WestJet fly only Boeing 737s, which will ensure a consistent experience for passengers in either airline. Moreover, sometime in the future, as both these airlines operate from each others’ hubs, maintainability would be much easier too.

Despite a number of US based airlines going bust in the past few months, and all the talk of consolidation and more bankruptcies in Europe, the budget airlines in Asia seem to be doing rather well.

Tiger Airways, based out of Singapore, is expanding into Australia rapidly and there are talks of starting a Korean hub. Air Asia is doing better than ever on regional routes, and now starting long haul budget travel as well. Even though the growth of Indian budget carriers has slowed, they are still doing well, given the state of the industry in the rest of the world. The fact that ever more Asian airports are coming up with budget terminals is testimony to the fact that demand will increase in the near future. So what is it that other airlines can learn from the Asian budget carriers to be more successful?

The airline industry is so dynamic that airlines need to keep coming up with innovative ways to make money to stay in business. This is especially true in the case of budget carriers or Low Cost Airlines (LCCs). One key characteristic of LCCs has been their point-to-point service, moving away from a hub-and-spoke model to save costs. But a new trend, in a totally opposite direction, has recently emerged, as first pointed out by the ITA Travel blog.
LCCs have started serving multiple P2P sections, effectively like a hub and spoke model. Tiger Airways customers can book two flights in one booking using their Flight Combo feature, effectively being able to travel from Chennai to Perth via Singapore, or from Darwin to Hanoi via Singapore. Air Berlin in Europe allows similar flexibility to passengers, flying via Düsseldorf in Germany.

Tiger Airways route map
The latest kid on the block is Air Arabia, the extremely popular Sharjah, UAE based airline. As mentioned on Popagandhi, they have formed a joint-venture with Nepal’s Yeti Airlines to launch a new budget carrier flyyeti.com, offering destinations in Southeast Asia and even Hong Kong based out of Kathmandu. So you can fly from Yerevan, Armenia to Hong Kong via Sharjah and Kathmandu (I’ve been to Armenia, and trust me, it’s not easy to get to that place, and you don’t want to fly Aeroflot). So why does this make sense for LCCs?