The continuing growth in low-cost airlines such as ValuJet and Frontier has made air travel newly accessible to millions of people, Transportation Secretary Federico Pena said Tuesday.
And, he said, the low-cost carriers are as safe as the big ones.Pena made the remarks while releasing a study that welcomed the growth of the smaller airlines in glowing terms.
"Last year, an incredible 47 million new passengers flew because of low-fare airlines," Pena said. "Virtually all passenger growth in this country in the last few years is attributable to these new entrants."
The Transportation Department has certified 39 new jet airlines since January 1993, 20 of them passenger lines.
The Transportation study concluded that the lower fares saved air travelers $6.3 billion last year - up from $1.1 billion in 1988. In cities that low-cost carriers serve, passengers pay an average of $54 less per flight than in other cities, the study found.
"All these airlines are safe," Pena said. "They are safe to fly. They are competent."
Pena said the proliferation of low-fare carriers has not hurt the big airlines, whose profits have increased even as the new smaller carriers challenge them.
Low fares are most readily available in cities on the West Coast and in the Southwest, and least so in the East, the study found.
Pena said the apparent reasons are that Western airports tend to be bigger and more capacious, and that low-cost airlines want to stay away from "the enormous, intense competition we see in the East Coast."
Randall Bennett of DOT's Office of Aviation said the study shows that big airlines had increased their fares in cities where they have little or no low-cost competition, such as Miami, New York and Cincinnati.
However, DOT expects low-cost carriers to begin moving into those markets, and Pena said the department will do everything it can to help them.
"We will continue to help entrepreneurs with the application process," he said. Also, "this department will continue to review allegations of anti-competitive behavior and pursue enforcement activities to prohibit it."
Low-cost carriers keep their fares low in part by flying older planes, particularly Boeing 737s.
The Air Transport Association of America, which represents most of the major U.S. airlines, sees the growth of low-cost carriers as an inevitable result of government deregulation of the industry, said spokesman Tim Neale.
He said the big carriers "have been making changes and adapting to the marketplace."