Opinion: Twenty bucks to Dublin?

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Americans have Southwest Airlines; across the Atlantic, Europeans have Ryanair. Though marketed as ‘no-frills,’ Southwest at least gives you free peanuts. On Ryanair, passengers don’t even get a window shade. Really.

For those of you who haven’t had the privilege of flying Europe’s most hated (and fastest-growing) airline, Ryanair’s service makes a flight on Southwest seem like a night at the Biltmore Hotel. Seats don’t recline, emergency cards are pasted on seat backs to avoid the cost of replacing them, and you can’t get so much as a cup of apple juice on board unless you’re willing to part with a few Euros. If you check luggage, you pay for it by the kilo. Ryanair is more Southwest than Southwest; and soon, Ryanair may be flying alongside Southwest.

Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary recently announced that he plans to launch a separate airline in a few years that would offer as low as $12 one-way fares between Europe and the U.S. But don’t think for a second you’ll be able to hop on a plane for what you’d pay for a large Domino’s pizza.

In Europe, Ryanair advertises seemingly insane fares -- say, less than a Euro to fly from Frankfurt, Germany to Oslo, Norway. The thing is, almost nothing in the previous sentence is true. Ryanair typically tacks on dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of Euros onto the base fare alone in ‘taxes and fees.’ Try it -- go to Ryanair’s website and put together a random itenerary. Then there are the airports, almost none of which are an advertised city’s primary facilities. Ryanair’s ‘Frankfurt’ is nearly 80 miles outside the city, not the Frankfurt airport most carriers use. In Norway, Ryanair doesn’t fly into Oslo’s primary international airport; it uses a facility 80 miles outside Oslo. In California, that would be similar to advertising an L.A.-San Francisco flight that’s really Bakersfield-Sacramento.

Still, I’m looking forward to O’Leary’s new airline starting service in the U.S., partly because, unlike Ryanair, its international cousin will offer first-class seating. If Ryanair can pioneer the 50-cent coach air fare, why can’t it introduce the $50 first-class ticket to Paris?