Ryanair is considering working with global long-haul airlines to offer interconnecting short-haul flights around Europe as it builds up services from Stansted.
The budget carrier is opening six new routes from the Essex airport this summer – including Edinburgh and Glasgow – to give it a total of 130 which it says it more than British Airways at Heathrow.
Chief executive Michael O’Leary said that Ryanair’s conversion to long-haul feeder came as Stansted increases efforts to attract US and Middle East airlines to the capital’s third airport.
“There is nothing we won’t consider. It has to work in a manner that does not delay our turnarounds and where we don’t take responsibility for connections,” he told The Times.
“Go forward in Europe five or ten years, the low-cost carriers, most notably us and easyJet, will do a lot more feeding of the major airlines like Lufthansa, BA and Air France,” he said.
“It is inevitable because these airlines will focus on the high yielding long-haul business and say ‘here, easyJet and Ryanair, you do the short-haul feeds because we’ll lose less money if you do.”
O’Leary said that he could envisage signing a contract with BA and predicted Air France and easyJet would take similar action.
Stnasted managing director Andrew Harrison said: “One million people a year fly to New York from the airport’s catchment area but none of them through Stansted, so that has to be looked at.”
Stansted confirmed that discussions were being held with all of Europe’s major long-haul carriers.
The move could be seen as an end to Ryanair’s own ambitions to run long-haul operations, with O’Leary saying the Irish airline was unlikely to run low-cost long-haul flights in the next four to five years.
The other new destinations to be served by Ryanair from Stansted are to Clermont, Cologne, Deauville and Ponta Delgada in the Azores, while frequency is being raised on 40 other routes.
The domestic services to Edinburgh and Glasgow will rise from three to four flights a day in winter 2015 in response to “phenomenal demand from UK customers, visitors and business travellers”.
The expansion means that Ryanair will connect Stansted with many of Europe’s major business centres, including Barcelona (four flights a day), Cologne (2), Dublin (8), Edinburgh (3), Glasgow (3) Madrid (4), Milan (4) and Rome (4).
The growth of 12% means Ryanair will handle 17 million passengers a year through Stansted.
Of the proposed takeover by BA parent IAG of Aer Lingus, in which Ryanair has 29%, O’Leary said he may yet launch a formal offer for the Irish flag carrier.
“There would be a delicious irony … if the UK competition authorities, in attempting to force Ryanair to sell down our 29% stake, only allow in British Airways to come and buy it,” he said.