Airline industry newcomers benefit from herd mentality of the old timers

When discussing airlines we often put them into geographic categories; for instance the European airlines, or the US carriers. For much of the industry's history these were useful designations, and in some cases they still are. But especially in the US, there are now two almost distinct industries, both doing the same thing but in quite different ways, making blanket declarations far more difficult. The first group is the shrinking cadre of legacy carriers, now down to five and likely to find further consolidation in their future. The other group is composed of all the new generation carriers that operate in the region, including the largest US carrier, Southwest.