Sort of, not really. The problem with flying is that it's a complex function that doesn't scale easily. Even if we assume there was a large enough number of pe

Sort of, not really. The problem with flying is that it's a complex function that doesn't scale easily. Even if we assume there was a large enough number of people just flying, say, SFO-JFK to support a new entrant to the route, there is a minimum volume the airline must fly to remain competitive. After all, no one is particularly interested in a SFO-JFK route that offers only 2 departures a day. And guess how you dramatically increase occupancy on your main routes? With feeder regional flights. A flight from a small city to a large airport, connect to another large airport, connect to another small city. A much larger percentage of all flights in the US are of this nature than most people know. The market for SFO-JFK only is not nearly as large as the market for XXX-SFO-JFK-YYY, not even close, and the legacy airlines, by offering regional short-hauls, stand to improve to the quality of their longer hauls by being able to do things like increase airplane size (therefore flight experience) and frequency. There is a lot more to succeeding as an airline than offering the in-flight experience people are willing to pay for.