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To comply with the simplicity principle of the archetypical low-cost carrier (LCC) business model, most LCC do not (yet) offer connecting flights. Nevertheless, due to the overall growth of the sector, more and more transfer opportunities between LCC flights have emerged-albeit mostly as "selfhubbing" under the radar of airlines and airports. In an exploratory approach, we assess the transfer potential between LCC services in Europe over time, relative to the network offered by the full service network carriers (FSNC). After a short review of air transport connectivity indicators and previous work on LCC transfer opportunities, we present an SQL-based approach for the identification of marketable one-stop connections from OAG schedules, considering pre-defined restrictions such as for connecting times and detour factors. We find that the European LCC network now allows for about 162k weekly one-stop connections, which is a big rise since 2006 but still far below the almost 725k connections offered by the network carriers. At airport-pair level, though, the low-cost sector already comes relatively close to the network carriers (15.9k vs. 25.3k). We also identify the largest transfer airports for low-cost, one-stop connections, and provide an overview of the most frequently served indirect origin-destination (OD) markets. We close the paper in identifying the most fundamental operational and commercial restrictions that should be overcome to fully exploit the identified potential of flight connections between LCC. This includes the questions of missed connections and baggage through-handling.

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