Cheap Travel on the Horizon?

There's a curious travel story up on Focus today (a German news magazine)....which discusses the idea of Ryanair....an Irish low-budget airline....which intends within four years to have a fourteen Euro one way flight from Europe to the US (basically seventeen dollars at the current rate).

Now, I should note that when they say fourteen Euro.....that's without the taxes and fees included. Typically, within Europe....Ryanair runs a fair number of flights which usually cost between ten and fifty Euro, but once you add the fees/taxes onto the deal.....you can figure another forty Euro tacked onto the deal for the one-way flight.  I do agree....it's the cheapest deal around and it's rare that you beat a discount deal with them.

Safe?  Well....they haven't ever crashed a jet or had any negative comments about safety.  If anything....these are the guys who'd charge you for just about everything.  Want a Coke?  Figure a couple of Euro.  Want something to eat?  Maybe five to ten Euro.

The plan laid out by Focus?  They suggest that several cities in the US (Boston, Chicago, NY City, Miami and eight other cities), along with fourteen cities in Europe.

In order to avoid the long distance carbon tax that the Europeans force onto all flights out of Europe.....they'd likely have the plane land in Dublin and you'd have to sit for an hour or two until you catch the next leg of the flight out.

How much of an effect would a fourteen Euro flight have on Americans?  Well....the Euro is shifting it's position.  Lots of good deals will occur when it gets to around one Euro to one dollar (by end of 2015....it'll happen).  If Ryanair timed their event correctly......they could probably two or three thousand Americans hyped up on discount trips and willing pay 150 Euro for a one-way flight (ticket, fees, and taxes) into Europe.

The airports in the US where this would be staged?  Typically, Ryanair prefers to pick no-name airports to operate out of.  For example.....their landing in the Frankfurt area is not at the primary Frankfurt airport.....it's over at Frankfurt-Hahn (a thirty-minute drive from Frankfurt and west of town).  The same would likely be true of landing spots in the US.  They might claim to land at NY City....but it's likely to be some airport sixty miles west of NY City.

Bottom line?  It'll be a curious deal if this plays out.  A guy with two weeks of time-off....a thousand dollars in his pocket?  He could fly off to Europe....spend ten days in Rome on the cheap.  Five years ago, with the bad exchange rate figured into things....a ten day trip to Rome with legit tickets per person and a reasonable hotel....with food and incidentals figured into the deal....would have been 2,250 dollars a person.  Between the better exchange rate and a fourteen Euro flight deal.....a thousand might be enough to do the same trip.