In this article, David Gunnarsson, CEO of Dohop, explores the flexible ways for low-fare and regional airlines to grow, including flexible, technology-led airline partnerships.
The traditional approach to airline network expansion has long followed this familiar pattern: order new aircraft, launch new routes, and reap the revenue and market share benefits of a larger geographical footprint.
While that’s still a viable path to growth for many airlines, it’s also become much slower and less efficient than it once was. IATA counts a current order backlog of nearly 17,000 aircraft. That’s around 60% of the active global fleet against a historical norm of 30% to 40%. At current delivery rates, clearing that backlog would take around 14 years, double the six-year average of 2013 to 2019. And McKinsey puts the shortage at 2,000 aircraft once deferred retirements are accounted for, with narrow-bodies making up around three quarters of it.
All these constraints significantly raise the cost of growing the old way.
Fuel-inefficient planes that should have retired two years ago are still flying, and lease rates have climbed as carriers hold jets they meant to return. Fuel remains the largest line on the airline P&L; IATA’s June 2026 Global Outlook for Air Transport noted that the price of jet fuel has roughly doubled since late February, leading the industry group to cut profit projections to just 2%, the lowest since the pandemic years.
Demand risk compounds the problem. IATA expects 5.2 billion passengers in 2026 at a record 83.8% load factor, though the growth is uneven across regions and travel classes. An airline that commits capital now, waits years for the aircraft, then tests the route against outdated demand forecasts is exposing itself to unnecessary risk.
Low-fare airlines under pressure
Low-fare and regional airlines feel that exposure first. As they run on point-to-point economics and tightly-controlled unit costs, traditional alliance membership asks them to carry a structure built for full-service network carriers. Entering an alliance or a bilateral codeshare means months (or longer) of commercial terms and regulatory filings, then the slow work of synchronising schedules and linking reservation systems. A carrier that competes on lean operations cannot absorb that overhead without surrendering the model that keeps its fares low. Codeshares also lock an airline to a partner for years, making them a poor instrument for testing whether a single route combination or city pair can support a profitable level of service.
The connected travel approach gives these carriers a third route between building a route themselves and joining a deeper alliance.
A technology platform combines flights from separate airlines into one bookable itinerary, and the platform coordinates baggage handling and disruption recovery across the whole journey, without the need for formal codeshare or interline contract between the carriers. A planner identifies a partner, validates the connection logic, and starts selling within weeks. The partner flies the added segment. And the selling airline keeps the customer relationship and the booking data without ordering a jet or building the route itself.
This model also suits market testing in a way codeshares never have, or will. An airline can launch a connected route, closely monitor the demand, and scale it with more frequencies and partners. Or they can pull it back without unwinding a multi-year agreement. A regional carrier can feed a partner’s long-haul bank or open a leisure market in weeks, and reverse the decision just as fast if the traffic never materialises.
Reach beyond organic fleet growth
Several of our partners show what that reach looks like at scale. Worldwide by easyJet, powered by Dohop, now sells more than 14,000 origin-destination combinations across 16 airline partners, none of which easyJet funded through fleet growth. Scoot opened more than 30 new destinations across Europe and Indonesia on the day it went live with its Dohop-powered platform, without adding a single aircraft. Wizz Air gave its passengers access to nearly 8,000 new route combinations when it launched WIZZ Link in partnership with Dohop. Each carrier has extended its network far faster than organic growth allows and at a cost no codeshare can approach.
Planners frame the choice differently. Network growth reads as a spectrum, with self-operated flying at one end and deep alliance integration at the other. Codeshares and connected travel partnerships fill the space between. A planner matches the tool to the opportunity: capital-intensive flying for a route that justifies a multi-year bet, a connected travel partnership for a market worth testing before any aircraft moves.
The central role of partnerships
Partnerships used to sit behind fleet decisions in a supporting role. Today, they are moving to the front of the strategy. When order backlogs take more than a decade to clear and fuel prices swing on geopolitics, an airline that can enter a market in weeks, read the demand, and scale or retreat without breaking a contract holds a material advantage over one waiting on metal.
At Dohop, we see this shift in how carriers plan, and none of it retires the alliance. Codeshares and joint ventures built much of the connectivity the industry runs on, and IATA’s Clearing House settled $63.8 billion across 581 airlines and partners in 2024. Meeting the demand IATA forecasts through the rest of the decade will take fleet growth and alliance capacity alongside everything else.
What has changed is that airlines now turn to the flexible, technology-led partnership first, and hold the capital and the long commitment for the markets that earn them. As easyJet and Scoot show, that approach is already delivering.
