Summary

  • Low-cost carriers (LCCs) account for 34% of total domestic capacity in the US, but this varies greatly between states.
  • As one of the top 5 states for air traffic, Georgia stands out for its very low LCC capacity, largely due to Delta’s dominance at ATL.
  • No secondary airport in Atlanta and a lack of major leisure destinations also contribute to Georgia’s low LCC presence.

Low-cost carriers (LCCs)* in the US have seen a robust rebound since the COVID-19 pandemic, with Southwest, Spirit, and Frontier all experiencing double-digit capacity growth in 2023. As a result, LCCs now account for 34% of all US scheduled airline seats. This is more than double the share that LCCs had just 15 years ago, but when you consider that LCCs have more than half of capacity in most European countries, there is still ample room for growth.

What’s up with Georgia?

LCC market share varies significantly by state in the US. Data from aviation analytics provider OAG shows that LCCs already make up two-thirds of the total market in Nevada. In Florida, the second-largest market for domestic air traffic, legacy carriers are under threat as LCCs are rapidly approaching half of all capacity.

Top 5 US states for Domestic Air Traffic
State Annual Flights Legacy Carriers LCCs
California 141,593,162 63.9% 36.1%
Florida 135,220,035 53.8% 46.2%
Texas 131,407,633 67.5% 32.5%
New York 99,720,320 74.9% 25.1%
Georgia 66,126,331 83.1% 16.9%
Source: OAG
Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines aircraft at PHX shutterstock_2402735225

Photo: Around the World Photos | Shutterstock

But one of the top five US states for domestic air traffic stands out: Georgia. Despite being the nation’s 8th-largest state economy and home to the world’s busiest airport, the LCC capacity share is less than half the national average at just 16.9%. Why is this?

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Low-Cost Carriers Make Up Just 34% Of US Airline Capacity

The US has the world average for low-cost and legacy capacity mix, with low-cost carriers growing faster than legacy full-service carriers.

The Delta effect

The first and most crucial reason Georgia is so different from other states is that its commercial air traffic is utterly dominated by a single airport: Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL). As the world’s busiest airport for a quarter of a century, ATL accounts for 97% of all arrivals and departures in Georgia. And the reason that makes such a big difference is that it is home to Delta Air Lines, one of the world’s most significant legacy carriers.

ATL has been Delta’s largest hub for decades, and the airline completely dominates traffic there. On average, the airport had over 2,200 daily flights in July 2024, and Delta accounted for more than 80% of that traffic. To put it in perspective, Atlanta is also one of Southwest’s top 10 hubs, but its traffic at the airport is less than one-tenth of Delta’s traffic. Frontier, as the second-largest LCC at ATL, offers less than half the capacity of Southwest.

A hub like no other

Therefore, ATL and the “Delta effect” are the primary reasons that Georgia has such low LCC penetration, despite the strong (and growing) presence of Southwest and, more recently, Frontier at the airport. This situation is unlikely to change any time soon because ATL is the mega-hub that every other global airline dreams of.

It is an exceptionally well-connected city with over 700 direct routes available from ATL. But more importantly, over 80% of the US population lives within a two-hour flight of ATL, making it the ideal connecting hub whether you are flying east-west or north-south. On any given day, up to 80% of the nearly 300,000 passengers flowing through ATL are connecting. This gives rise to the joke: “When you die, whether you’re going to heaven or hell, you’ll have to connect through Atlanta.”

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No secondary airport

However, with that much traffic at one airport, it makes you wonder why Atlanta doesn’t have a secondary airport. After all, most other large US cities like New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Miami, or Chicago have a second or even a third sizeable commercial airport. Crucially, these secondary airports often end up being hubs for LCCs. Think of Southwest at Dallas Love Field (DAL) or Chicago Midway (MDW), Sprit at

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport

(FLL) or Allegiant at

Orlando Sanford

(SFB)

But Atlanta is unlikely to ever have a secondary airport for a number of reasons:

  • Despite being the world’s busiest airport, ATL’s current infrastructure, with five runways and seven terminals, is more than sufficient.
  • ATL also has plenty of room for expansion, whether it is adding a sixth runway or more terminals, and expansion is a lot less demanding than constructing a whole new facility
  • The other airports in the Atlanta area are executive airports with far shorter runways that are unsuitable for expansion.
  • A secondary airport would need to be in the Atlanta suburbs, which have become decisive in local and national elections and would be a political hot potato for the Georgia governor.
  • Perhaps most importantly, Delta strongly supports maintaining just ATL, and somewhat surprisingly, Southwest, as the second-largest airline, is in agreement.

No significant leisure destinations

The third reason Georgia is so LCC-light is that unlike Florida, California, or Nevada, it doesn’t have prominent leisure destinations that act as drawcards for LCCs. Orlando or Las Vegas are central to the networks of every LCC in the US as they fly cost-conscious passengers on their vacation trips, but Georgia doesn’t have anything remotely similar.

Savannah/Hilton Head (SAV) accounts for nearly all of Georgia’s commercial air capacity outside Atlanta. While it is a charming colonial town famous for its historic buildings separated by cobblestone streets and leafy parks draped in Spanish Moss, it is not a leisure metropolis. Even so, the legacy carriers also have a stranglehold here, with Delta, American, and United accounting for 76% of all flights to and from SAV.

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So even as LCCs take an ever-larger share of capacity in the rest of the world, Georgia is likely to remain unchanged. Outside of any expansion that Southwest and Frontier are able to achieve at ATL, which will likely be more than matched by Delta’s growth at its most profitable hub, Georgia will remain a bastion for legacy carriers.

* There is debate about what defines an LCC and whether airlines like Southwest are still considered an LCC. For this analysis, a carrier is regarded as an LCC if it competes primarily on price, operates a single aircraft family, configures its aircraft with the maximum number of seats, and/or charges for additional services like preferred seating.

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