I was looking over an analysts report this morning on Allegiant Airlines and was struck by the chasm between “the lowest of low cost airlines” and the legacy airlines.

Allegiants fuel bill went up at approximately the same percentage as the un-hedged legacy airlines and they still squeezed out a pretty impressive profit.

For those that are not familiar with Allegiant they fly a fleet of MD-80’s (just shy of 40 planes) with service to Vegas, Reno, Phoenix and popular Florida destinations from under served smaller cities, to leisure destinations at off the beaten path airports.

They tend to fly leisure travelers with non daily flight schedules and from all accounts tend to do a pretty good job at it — I am wondering if we’ll end up with more “Allegiants” in the near future for those cities that have been given up on by the bigger boys… Congrats Allegiant for hanging tough in what is definitely the most “trying” environment in history for air travel.