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Ryanair is the world’s most frequently flown airline, flying to thirty-seven countries across Europe and Africa, serving 220 destinations with a fleet of 464 Boeing 737-800’s (with one Boeing 737-700 used for training), and are an ever-expanding dominating cornerstone of the European air market.

Conversely, Airbus, the vast airline manufacturer, has been struggling with the sales of their A380. Whilst sales were initially good, such as Emirates who have over 100 A380’s and have fifty more on order, for example, sales have since slowed right down way below what is possible with this product line.

What if Airbus somehow enticed the world’s most popular Airline with the world’s biggest jet? What would that look like? Would it look like the design for the EasyJet or Ryanair 787’s? Or something much more?

The Ryanair A380 Fit Out

This section is going to take a look at what it may be like to fly on a Ryanair A380. We want to imagine in terms of service, fit out and how it will compare to their current operations.

The boarding process will have to be incredibly rapid, as this is one of the trademarks of Ryanair (they aim for a turnaround time of just 20 minutes). For an A380, this would mean utilising multiple jet bridges and grouping passengers into categories depending on where they sit on the plane (much like United’s boarding process).

Ryanair currently does not offer any variety of seat class and would likely turn the super plane into an all-economy cattle class by fitting over 853 passengers (Ryanair is notorious for removing toilets to fit more seats and we could expect them to continue this trend) onto the two decks. If the seats are anything like their current planes, they would feature the bare minimum: no tray tables, safety cards glued to the back of the seats and life jackets stowed above.

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Perhaps they would develop a new premium class like their competitors for long-haul routes, offering extra legroom, a meal and included entertainment. They may have to offer a variety of new services for a trip that lasts over five hours, at least a beverage and meal service as a lengthy flight will most likely require these by law.

Entertainment systems would be included, as they are a core feature of an Airbus A380 (from Airbus themselves, not the fit-out crew), which Ryanair could use as a new offering on board. If Ryanair is anything to go by, they could charge passengers for each film watched. With these back-of-seat technology systems, Ryanair could also offer in-seat service and ordering. If a passenger wants a food item they can select, pay and have it delivered all without the use of a food cart, cutting down on staff cost.

Ryanair currently only utilises one type of plane – the 737. By incorporating a new plane (from a different manufacture no less) into their network would mean they would lose all the economies of scale that they have currently been capitalising on. They would have to train their entire staff on the specific new plane, have a stockpile of spare parts ready and organise maintenance contracts.

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Where would they fly?

It would be difficult for a fully loaded A380 to be profitable for Ryanair, the short European routes between minor cities that Ryanair currently runs as its main business model would not be feasible.

Plus, there is a slight problem that the Airbus plane is so large that there are only a handful of airports that the craft can fly to. Ryanair currently flies to 220 destinations whilst the biggest A380 airline, Emirates, flies to only 55 destinations with the craft. They would be extremely limited in their choice of routes (There were 19 airports that saw A380 traffic in Europe in 2017) and would have to find two destinations that can not only take the plane but have little competition and have the passenger demand.

Thus they would have to look at long-haul destinations over the Atlantic or the Pacific. We would expect routes between major cities like New York and London, that can handle an additional 800 seats added to the marketplace.

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How realistic is this future?

One of the arguments in favour of this move is the fact that many Airlines that have Airbus A380’s can’t sell them onwards after their term of service. As we saw with Singapore, they barely found a buyer for their two retiring A380 planes, selling them to wet leasing firm HiFly. With more than 100 Airbus A380s on the market nearing retirement, Ryanair is one of the only private airlines with the capital to afford them and could be offered some very nice deals to take one off of their competitors’ hands.

To understand how realistic this is from a market perspective, we only need to look at the current long haul, low-cost option on the market, Norwegian Air. With Norwegian Air, everything is for sale, form extra legroom seats to blankets and even renting headphones. This powers their long-haul business model and has made them a game changer in the industry, so much so that competitors are launching completion. This allows them to offer incredibly low fares such as flying all the way to America from Europe for under $200.

However, as mentioned in other news, Norwegian Air is actually facing some dire financial overextension and barely making a profit. Whether or not they will last another year remains to be seen.

With Ryanair, if they had Airbus A380’s instead of their current fleet of Boeing 737’s their capacity would increase from 189 passengers per plane to 868 passengers per plane – an almost 4.6x increase overnight. This raises the question of where would they even find this amount of customers? They do not want to overextend themselves like Norwegian Air, and would potentially only cannibalise their own business if they went down this direction.

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There always have been rumours of Ryanair looking across the Atlantic, but whether or not this will be their plane of choice, we will have to wait and see.