The pricing of low-cost carriers (LCCs) compared with traditional airlines has been extensively investigated since their inception in the air transport market. Abundant empirical evidence attests that, on average, LCCs' fares (per km) are lower than those usually offered by full-service carriers (FSCs). Such literature, however, paid virtually no attention to the conditions under which LCCs lose their convenience compared to traditional airlines. The purpose of this study is to investigate the occurrence of LCCs sometimes offering higher fares than FSCs on competing flights. By using a dataset expressly collected for this purpose, we are able to quantify its frequency and suggest some possible explanations. These findings concur to cast some questions on the widely held preconception of vertical differentiation between LCCs' and FSCs’ offered services. Further research will be needed in order to understand the relative weight of the suggested factors.

自从低成本航空公司（LCC）进入航空运输市场以来，它的价格就得到了广泛的研究。平均而言，大量的经验证据证明，低成本航空的票价（每公里）低于全方位服务运营商（FSC）通常提供的票价。但是，与传统航空公司相比，此类文献几乎没有关注LCC失去便利的条件。这项研究的目的是调查在竞争性航班上有时提供比FSC更高的票价的LCC。通过使用为此目的明确收集的数据集，我们能够量化其频率并提出一些可能的解释。这些发现同意对LCC和FSC提供的服务之间的垂直区分的普遍观念提出一些疑问。为了理解建议因素的相对权重，需要进行进一步的研究。