Could budget airlines topple Asia's legacy carriers?

by Frances Cha, Seoul Editor

Traveling on budget airlines is a way of life in Europe and North America.

But in Asia, where low-cost carriers have only recently begun cutting into the market shares of established airlines, their impact on commercial aviation will likely far surpass anything seen in other markets.

Budget operators? share of the Asian aviation market surged from zero to 25 percent over the past decade, according to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, which estimates that there will be 50 budget airlines in the region by the end of 2012, with approximately 1,000 aircraft on order.

?Ten years ago, network airlines almost universally declared that low-cost carrier operations simply wouldn?t work in the Asia Pacific region, but today nearly all full-service airlines in the region have their own low-cost offshoots,? says Tom Ballantyne, Hong Kong-based chief correspondent for commercial aviation magazine Orient Aviation.

Peaches freshens up Japanese market

The latest quirkily named and brightly colored, low-cost carrier to debut in the region is Japan?s Peach Aviation -- a partnership between All Nippon Airways (ANA) and an investment group in Hong Kong -- which inaugurated service in March with a flight from Osaka to Nagasaki.

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