Ryanair (FR, Dublin International) is set to trial hub-and-spoke operations this summer CEO Michael O'Leary has said. The airline, which relies on the point-to-point model at present, will begin offering connecting flights at its London Stansted and Barcelona El Prat bases this summer.
"The only complexity is can we get the bag across to the other flights without losing loads of bags," he told the Irish Independent in an interview. "We'll run it across a three or six-month period and see what the demand is like. It's not going to increase our load factors and we don't want to displace point-to-point passengers either."
Should the strategy prove successful, O'Leary said it could be rolled out to additional airports. And if the model proves successful as a whole for the company, O'Leary says it could then used in tandem with other carriers.
"... if we can make it work between our own flights, then there's no reason why we can't transfer onto other airlines as well," he added.
Last year, O'Leary said talks with TAP Portugal (Lisbon), Norwegian (Oslo Gardermoen), and an undisclosed US carrier were already ongoing about Ryanair feeding regional European traffic into each of their longhaul bases. Separate talks with Aer Lingus (EI, Dublin International) and Virgin Atlantic (VS, London Heathrow) ended following disagreements over responsibility for missed connections and which carrier would incur the added cost, he said at the time.
