Cheap Flights Across the Pond?

Europe's biggest low-cost carrier, Ryanair, announces plans to go transatlantic for as little as 10 euros one-way

The CEO of Europe's biggest low-cost carrier, Ryanair, has announced plans to launch a transatlantic airline. His wants to offer tickets for as low as 10 euros for a flight to the US from Europe. But will it work?

Three months after cheap-flight giant Ryanair had publicly denied interest in routes to America, its CEO, Michael O'Leary, has announced an idea for a whole new airline that will start transatlantic flights in 2010 -- for as little as 10 euros one-way.

"We've been approached by a number of airports in the US who are very keen to see us start a long-haul, low-fare service, and we're working on plans to start flying the Atlantic," O'Leary told reporters today during a flight from Dublin to Germany. He greeted the media at the check-in counter with a catchy promotional phrase: "Ten-euro tickets to New York!"

The base price of a cheap-flight ticket is always naked of taxes and extra fees, which can pile up quickly. O'Leary said the new company would try to make profits in sales of food, beverages, duty-free products and paid in-flight entertainment programs -- as Ryanair does now -- and it would offer a luxury service with ticket prices set higher than full-service carriers like British Airways.

Just last January, the marketing and sales manager for Ryanair in Germany, Katja Zarbock, had assured reporters that the airline had no interest in investing in long distance routes. That seems to have been the truth on a technicality: O'Leary said the new airline would be a sister or associate company rather than part of Ryanair, and that no Ryanair money would be used to start it up. "There are a lot of investors who are keen to see a low-fare airline operate a transatlantic service, and money is the last thing we'll need," he said.

The new airline would use a fleet of 30 to 50 long-haul aircraft, and its success relies on a reduction in the price of those planes over the next year or two. It also relies on implementation of last month's "open skies" deal between Europe and the United States -- which would open markets to new carriers and loosen restrictions on where international airlines can fly.

O'Leary has announced plans to step down as CEO of the Ireland-based Ryanair in the next three years. He wouldn't be the new company's chief executive, he said, though he would "personally have some say in the way it's run."

In the third quarter of 2006 Ryanair announced a 30 percent increase in profits over the same period in 2005. O'Leary said at the time that Ryanair had benefited from "excessive and unjustified" greenhouse-gas fees imposed on customers by the competition.

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