Summer reading, part 1

(Enjoy some light summer reading instead of my usual pander.)

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are 1,000 of someone else's words:

(There's a full-sized, 1754x2991 version available via the link.)

It's a comparison chart of low-cost carriers versus their larger, lardier counterparts based on cost breakdowns. (I first saw it on Chart Porn, which is a great site for those of you into visualization of numeric data. Before you ask, no, there aren't many flesh tones. But it's still an interesting site.)

For one, I am quite surprised to see just how much the difference in seat density impacts the bottom line.

Two, I wonder how well the traditional airlines will fare as they try to play catch up by cutting frills. Can they narrow the gap? Would they even want to?