If you've ever tried to build a travel product that covers all flights — not just the legacy carriers — you've hit the same wall everyone else has. Low-cost carriers (LCCs) don't participate in traditional distribution. And that means every travel API on the market has a massive blind spot.
This isn't a niche problem. It's a $50 billion gap in the travel technology market, and it affects every platform, bank, and fintech trying to offer comprehensive flight search and booking.
The Scale of the Problem
Low-cost carriers now account for over 40% of European short-haul capacity. Ryanair alone commands roughly 33% of the European market by passenger volume, making it the largest airline in Europe by number of passengers carried. Add Wizz Air, EasyJet, Vueling, and Transavia, and you're looking at the majority of intra-European air travel.
In Southeast Asia, the picture is similar. AirAsia, Lion Air, and Cebu Pacific dominate short-haul routes. In the Americas, carriers like Spirit, Frontier, and Volaris continue to grow aggressively.
These airlines serve hundreds of millions of passengers annually. Yet when a travel agent, bank, or AI-powered booking platform queries a GDS or modern travel API, most of these flights simply don't appear.
Why LCCs Don't Show Up in APIs
The reason is straightforward: LCCs have deliberately opted out of traditional distribution channels. Here's why:
- GDS fees are expensive. Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport charge per-segment booking fees that erode the razor-thin margins LCCs operate on. A $2–4 GDS surcharge on a $30 fare is economically unviable.
- Ancillary revenue is king. LCCs generate 40-60% of their revenue from add-ons — baggage, seats, priority boarding, food. GDS systems historically couldn't merchandise these products effectively.
- Direct distribution is the strategy. LCCs want customers on their own websites and apps, where they control the upsell funnel, own the customer data, and avoid intermediary commissions.
- NDC adoption is fragmented. While NDC (New Distribution Capability) was supposed to solve this, LCC adoption has been slow and inconsistent. Ryanair and EasyJet have their own partnership programs, but they're restrictive and not available through standard API aggregators.
The Impact on Travel Platforms
For any company building a travel product — whether it's a neobank offering lifestyle services, a corporate travel management tool, or an AI agent that books flights — incomplete coverage is a dealbreaker.
Imagine a customer searching for London to Barcelona. The cheapest option is almost certainly Ryanair or EasyJet. But if your platform can only show British Airways and Iberia through GDS, your customer sees prices 2-3x higher than what's actually available. They leave, open Skyscanner, and you've lost the transaction — and the trust.
A travel API without LCC coverage is like a search engine that only indexes half the internet. You can build on it, but your users will always know something is missing.
This problem compounds for banks and fintechs. When a premium banking customer asks their concierge to book a weekend getaway, and the platform can't find the most obvious flights on the market, it undermines the entire value proposition.
How RunRelay Solves the LCC Problem
RunRelay takes a fundamentally different approach to LCC coverage. Instead of waiting for airlines to join distribution networks — which they have no incentive to do — RunRelay uses human-assisted booking to cover the carriers that APIs can't reach.
Here's how it works:
- Unified search. When an API consumer sends a flight search request, RunRelay queries GDS/NDC sources for legacy and full-service carriers, AND returns LCC results by aggregating direct airline data.
- Human operators for booking. When a customer selects an LCC flight, a trained operator books directly on the airline's website — handling the entire flow including passenger details, ancillary selection, and payment.
- Async confirmation. The booking is confirmed asynchronously. The API consumer receives a webhook callback with the PNR, e-ticket, and booking details — typically within 5-15 minutes.
- Full lifecycle management. Post-booking changes, cancellations, and disruption handling are managed by the same human concierge layer, ensuring the customer never has to interact with the airline directly.
This approach means RunRelay customers get true 100% market coverage — GDS carriers, NDC airlines, and LCCs — through a single API integration.
The $50B+ Market Gap
The low-cost carrier segment represents over $150 billion in annual ticket sales globally. The distribution and technology layer capturing commissions, ancillary attach rates, and service fees on this volume is conservatively a $50B+ opportunity.
Yet no major travel API — not Duffel, not Amadeus for Developers, not Kiwi's Tequila — offers reliable, bookable LCC content across the board. The market is wide open for a solution that bridges this gap.
RunRelay's human-in-the-loop model isn't a workaround. It's a pragmatic recognition that some problems can't be solved purely with technology — at least not yet. And in the meantime, travel platforms need comprehensive coverage today, not in three years when LCCs might finally adopt NDC.
What This Means for Your Platform
If you're building or operating a travel product, ask yourself: can your customers book Ryanair? If the answer is no, you're missing 40% of European short-haul — and a significant chunk of global budget travel.
RunRelay gives you that coverage through a single REST API, with the same structured response format whether the flight is on Lufthansa via GDS, Emirates via NDC, or Ryanair via human-assisted booking. Your integration is the same. The coverage is complete.