Manchester Boston Regional Airport may offer $12 trans-Atlantic flights by 2009 if Michael O'Leary, chief executive of low-budget Irish airline Ryanair, succeeds in launching a new airline. However, the airport's assistant manager Brian O'Neill said he remains skeptical, partially because Ryanair has yet to contact the airport.
The announcement of O'Leary's plans to launch a low-budget airline with service between the United States and Europe appeared in the April 17, 2007 edition of Flight International magazine. The Boston Globe reported that the Manchester airport and T.F. Green International Airport near Providence, RI, are candidates for the future airline's New England stop. However, neither airport has been contacted by Ryanair yet, O'Neill said.
He added that he first learned of the potential deal with Ryanair from a reporter for the Boston Globe, who had received the information elsewhere. According to O'Neill, Manchester is not necessarily interested in pursuing the opportunity to have Ryanair serve the airport.
"We are going to be trying to talk to Ryanair to see how serious they are," O'Neill said.
O'Neill expressed skepticism about Ryanair's plans, explaining that starting an international subsidiary can be challenging. He also said that Ryanair may only be looking to put pressure on Aer Lingus, a rival Irish airline, to return to the negotiating table to discuss a potential merger.
However, in his interview with Flight International magazine last week, O'Leary was confident in Ryanair's ability to launch the trans-Atlantic airline before his tenure at the company ends in 2010.
The airline will be distinct from Ryanair and will connect Ryanair's 23 European bases to six or seven secondary airports in the United States. It would also be the first low-budget airline to include a premium cabin for business travelers.
"It will be relatively straightforward for us to do a deal for 40 to 50 long-haul aircraft and connect these European bases trans-Atlantically and there would be no one to touch us," O'Leary said in the interview.
O'Neill said that Manchester Boston Regional Airport, which already has four international flights to Toronto, is not actively looking to expand its international service. A more important objective, he added, is increasing domestic service and creating additional opportunities for customers to fly domestically out of Manchester instead of going through larger airports, such as Boston's Logan International. O'Neill named Phoenix, Los Angeles and Dallas as cities he hopes to extend service to in the near future.
"We must show that our market is large enough to support some of the longer domestic flights. As we continue to build our airport, airlines will see we're successful," O'Neill said.
The trans-Atlantic flights will be made possible by the newly-passed open skies deal between the European Union and the United States, which would lower restrictions and allow EU airlines more coverage to airports in the United States. U.S. airlines will also be able to conduct flights to any city in the EU. The first parts of the agreement are set to take effect in March 2008 and are designed to lower the cost of trans-Atlantic flights, increase the number of flights and give consumers more choice over which carrier they decide to take.
