We’d all love to be able to visit America more often, but the price of them long-haul, transatlantic flights make it difficult to afford. However, luckily for all you travel junkies, Ryanair plans to change all that.
Long haul flights usually end up costing around £500 at least. This is partly due to the distance, but also because of the lack of budget airlines making the trip across the Atlantic. Transatlantic journeys are the most profitable in the world, but have always been largely dominated by airlines such as Virgin Atlantic, British Airways and American Airlines. However, they could soon be joined in the sky by the most unlikely of airlines.
Ryanair is the cheapest budget airline company in the UK, specialising in cheap flights to european destinations, but it also has a bad reputation. This being said, since being labelled the worst company in the UK, they’ve made extra efforts to clean up their act. In doing so, they’ve seen an increase in profits due to improved Customer Service performance – an area in which they significantly fell short. Ryanair flights have never been the most pleasant, but this along with their recent proposal blows everything else out of the water, and will change the travel and tourism industry forever, never mind their own reputation and lives of keen travellers everywhere.
So what are they proposing?
They’re only offering transatlantic flights for as little as £10! Yes, that’s right. Cheap flights to America. We have to be honest, this does sound a little ridiculous but according to Ryanair, it’s part of their five-year growth strategy. The Irish airline’s board has approved plans to fly between up to 14 European cities and the same number of US cities, with destinations including Chicago, Boston, Miami and New York flying from the likes of London, Berlin and Dublin.
These flights are sure to be a big hit with European consumers who want low-cost travel to the USA and the same for Americans coming to Europe. A spokesperson for Ryanair said, “We see it as a logical development in the European market.” We fully agree with them, if Ryanair can pull this off they will be the first to do so at such low prices, which will definitely improve their popularity ten-fold.
What do they get out of it?
The service would be aimed at a different market to the traditional airlines – the budget market, and so it would generate new demand in that field. Think about it, if you can fly people across the Atlantic for such a small price, a lot of people would fly, even if just for a long weekend.
However, to make this economical for themselves, they would have to attract business customers who would pay premium fares in order to stay in profit. They would also have to get a good deal on the purchase of long-haul aircrafts that are both efficient and cost-effective.
A few airlines have tried and failed to provide such a service as this, but we are rooting for Ryanair to get this off the ground. The services could start in four or five year’s time. We can’t wait!
