The American airline industry is a highly competitive yet heavily regulated battlefield No airline has greater than a 18% market share in the U.S and any M&A deal that would bring that number to 20% or higher is automatically blocked by the Justice Department. All this made the emergence of low-cost airlines like Southwest, JetBlue, Spirit, Frontier, and Alaska in the 2010s all the more impressive - as they consistently outperformed the old-school legacy carriers in profitability and loyalty with fewer planes and marketing spend. Across universities and the private sector, these low-cost carriers were celebrated as leaders in strategy, innovation, and culture. But fast forward to the 2020s and this low-cost future has not materialized. The low-cost carriers are all struggling, some on the doorstep of bankruptcy, and the legacy carriers are back on top both in earnings and valuations. Is the airline industry really rigged? How exactly did the legacy carriers reclaim market s