Quote:
"I think if there were open skies, we'd certainly look at maybe setting up a sister or a brother airline to Ryanair which would look at operating long-haul, low-fare flights, particularly from Ireland to the United States."
Source: Michael O'Leary at AGM, Dublin, Sept. 21.
It would be somewhat difficult for Ryanair to get into the long-haul market, their model, even via a sister comapny, wouldn't work as well in this segment.
Things like the fast turnaround doesn't become so much of an issue because of the reduced number of sectors, they'd also have to start paying for their staff to stay in hotels and they'd have to clean the planes. Additionally, cramming passengers into a 737 for a 1hr journey is one thing but cramming them into a A330 for 8 hours is another.
There is also the fact that they don't have any equipment capable of flying long haul nor the staff to fly them.
Their only option would be to buy an existing airline, which isn't going to happen because they'd have to impose their working models on staff who are probably unionized and protected. One of the pseudo-charter/scheduled companies might be an option though. We'll see what happens.