Air France-KLM, IAG, Lufthansa LCC strategies: denial, submission, retreat, now counter-attack

Over 20 years the responses of Europe's big three legacy groups to the short/medium haul LCC revolution have all been through phases of denial, submission, retreat, and counter-attack.

Now all three now have a more clearly defined LCC strategy than in the past. IAG, with Vueling and Iberia Express, has the largest, most pan-European and most profitable LCC, helping the group to grow its short/medium haul traffic. The Lufthansa and Air France-KLM LCCs are more defensive, to preserve market share. Both have only recently started LCC bases outside their original home markets. Lufthansa (after a false start with high cost Germanwings, now transferring to Eurowings) has replaced mainline capacity with LCC capacity, route-for-route. Air France-KLM has grown Transavia while cutting mainline capacity, but without substitutions route-for-route.

Only Lufthansa has taken its LCC onto long haul routes, albeit on a limited scale. Facing the more complex challenges on long haul, all three are developing a growing range of partnerships with other airlines. They have also sought to improve labour productivity in their legacy network airlines, with varying degrees of success, but again led by IAG. A next step may even be to connect with their arch rivals.