Ryanair: Conquering Europe before going transatlantic
Wednesday 28, May 2014
Ryanair is planning on conquering Europe and becoming the undisputed low-cost airline of choice before it introduces its transatlantic routes, in fewer than 10 years.
The low-cost airline is aiming to account for a third of all flights in Europe by following the model of Southwestern Airlines in the US.
Ryanair’s chief marketing officer, Kenny Jacobs, said that there is still room for growth in Europe before the company rolls out its transatlantic plan.
“A lot of headroom still before we have to look at transatlantic, but it would be a great development to go alongside the headroom in Europe,” he said.
Mr Jacobs said that Germany and the Scandinavian countries are still lagging behind in the move to low-cost carriers compared with Ireland and the UK.
“There is still plenty of headroom in Europe. when you look at the European market. I mean in Germany, in the UK, in Scandinavia we could grow very, very significantly.
“We are the biggest in Europe with 82m passengers and that gives us 13% market share, by contrast with the US where Southwest would have 30% market share of short-haul. We can significantly increase the market share that we have in Europe.
“If you contrast the UK with Germany about six out of 10 flights in and out of the UK are on low-cost carriers, where its about 16% in Germany so a good bit of headroom,” he said.
Mr Jacobs said it would be a little over five years before Ryanair would be offering transatlantic flights, for about €10 base price, once they have acquired the right planes to operate the route.
“It is still a number of years off yet. To get the aircraft that we want and to get them in the right numbers that we would need to do it at the scale that we would do it at.
“We have got a plan and we are confident that we can make it work, it is just getting the aircraft is the missing piece of the jigsaw to get on with it,” he said.
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