
Happy New Year! When I see a chart like the above, it’s unfathomable to believe that it’s a good time to be in the airline business, let alone be a startup trying to enter the capital intensive sector. But that’s what David Neeleman (the founder of JetBlue) plans to do. History is littered with failures of upstart airlines due to a myriad of factors that make it an extremely difficult sector to compete in. Today’s 3 large legacy carriers (Delta, United and American) are the result of years of consolidation and currently control ~50% of the US market.