Cheap flights to the US just got cheaper

Courtesy of Ryanair we might soon be enjoying $12 weekend shopping trips to New York. Really cheap flights to the USA, sounds too good to be true, well think again, Michael O’Leary head honcho of the Irish low-cost carrier announced in Flight International Magazine, his plans to fly to start transatlantic no-frills flights between Europe and the US in as little as four years time and for as little as a slap-up lunch!

With the advent of low-cost flights to Hong-Kong, cut-price long-haul travel already a reality. Some low-fare carriers such as Air Asia X have suffered a setback but the dawn of cheap long-haul travel is here to stay whether our climate changes or not. Independent to the current Ryanair brand, the new long-haul no-frills carrier, would mean a purchase of up to 50 widebody Airbus A350s or Boeing 787s in order to service the planned new routes to six US cities. The prospective of cheap flights to America is a positive sign for Florida real estate owners, in fact anyone with a USA holiday home as it will vastly improves accessibility and drive down the overall cost of vacation rentals. Weekend in Disneyland, anyone?

O’Leary’s announcement trumps rival airlines racing to operate newly deregulated transatlantic EU-US air travel routes such as Zoom who start flying out of Gatwick to New York on June 21st including two services via Bermuda from just £129 one-way. The monopoly on many popular US routes has been broken as Zoom co-founder commented “it is high time that passengers had a better deal. We are offering savings of up to 70 per cent on these flights.”

Whilst you may soon be able to travel across the pond for the price of lunch, buying it on-board might be more costly as in true no-frills style Ryanair ‘Atlantic’ plans to increase its revenue on its transatlantic services through the sale of food, duty-free items, in-flight entertainment - hey at least the lifejackets are still free!! There are even plans for a slightly more frills ‘premier class’, where you may just be entitled to a free drink every hour.

Having already received speculative approaches from secondary US airports such Baltimore, Providence in Rhode Island and New York Long Island, O’Leary expects that by mid 2009, “we will be carrying 70 million passengers at 23 bases across Europe”.

The low-cost phenomenon continues onward and for me the outright winner is the global traveller/homeowner, the opportunity for travel abroad has never been greater or cheaper. Just think, not paying for baggage on the way out, means you’ve got 15kg of space to fill for the way back!