Low cost airlines and lessors: leasing is mutually pleasing

The world's LCCs include some large, well established airlines with strong balance sheets, who make little use of leasing.

Examples include Ryanair, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Pegasus Airlines and easyJet.

Nevertheless, many LCCs have sizeable fleets that have been largely or entirely developed through leasing. These include Wizz Air, Volaris, Jet2.com, Gol, Frontier Airlines, Azul and - the biggest LCC lessee - IndiGo.

IndiGo also has 951 outstanding aircraft orders, which is the world's biggest backlog. These orders are in its own name, but its current fleet is 75% leased, suggesting that it will make significant use of sale and leaseback as orders are delivered (a popular LCC approach).

Individual examples aside, low cost airlines as a whole lease 68% of their fleets, higher than the global airline average of 53%.

It would seem that lessors and LCCs offer each other mutual benefits.