Ryanair's new plan for domination: Get rivals to help

Ryanair is closing in on a series of agreements that could see the discount giant take control of an even bigger swathe of European short-haul travel. The Dublin-based company is seeking deals with carriers including Norwegian Air Shuttle, Aer Lingus, Alitalia and Lufthansa under which its flights would help feed passengers onto their long-haul services. Ryanair would be open to adding frequencies in order to provide sufficient connectivity and could ultimately replace many short-haul services operated by network carriers, encouraging them to focus exclusively on intercontinental routes, CEO Michael O’Leary said. “The upside for us is in persuading the legacy carriers to stop trying to compete with us on short-haul because it feeds their long-haul,” he said. “Work with us on short haul, you lose less money, I’ll have less competition.” Ryanair is seeking to seal accords in time for its summer timetable, with the arrangements likely to see passengers book flights to their end destination via the long-haul carriers’ websites, but fly European sectors on the Irish company’s jets. Baggage would be transferred automatically, though the agreements are likely to stop short of code-share terms, in which airlines sell tickets on each other’s flights as if they were their own. “There’s nothing but upside for the legacy carriers in this, except you’ve got to persuade them it’s not some scam,” O’Leary said. O’Leary cites Aer Lingus’s short-haul business in Dublin to illustrate how the feeder plan would work. The carriers compete directly on 28 services, he said, and while Ryanair wouldn’t seek to take over “trunk routes” a deal would allow the IAG unit to forgo unprofitable peripheral operations while connecting to the 85 destinations offered by its discount rival, including Birmingham and Edinburgh.<br/>