Charlemagne. Low-cost founding fathers

How cheap air flights are bringing Europeans together

BRUSSELS is full of monuments to the “builders of Europe”. There is the Schuman district, the Monnet circle, the Spinelli building. It may now be time for a Stelios Square or a Boulevard O'Leary. For in recent years, Stelios Haji-Ioannou and Michael O'Leary, the two pioneers of Europe's low-cost airlines, have done more to integrate Europe than any numbers of diplomats and ministers. They have helped to create a new generation for whom travelling to another European country is no longer exotic or expensive, but utterly commonplace.

On a recent Friday night at Stansted airport, near London, it was easy to see how people's lives have changed. There was Ettore Thermes, an Italian financier, who commutes every week between his home in Rome and his office in London and says “I use the plane like a bus.” Or Suzy Romer, a Scottish student visiting her boyfriend in Bilbao, who noted that “what these airlines do is let you live in two countries at once.” Then there was a group of middle-aged men and women, who schedule weekends away in Europe around the fixtures of Leicester rugby club: that particular weekend they were heading for Bergamo in northern Italy. And there were American backpackers marvelling at the fact that their flights to Barcelona had cost the same as their train tickets from London to Stansted.

None of these people had paid more than £50 ($95) for their flights. All agreed that they were taking journeys, and indeed making choices about their lives, that would have been quite impossible before the low-cost revolution. Indeed Europeans are now so blase about hopping on a plane that confusion can easily result. Last summer your correspondent got chatting to a British traveller still hanging around the airport in Rodez, in France's Massif Central, more than an hour after the arrival of her Ryanair flight. “My friends will be arriving by boat soon,” she asserted confidently. On further questioning, it emerged that she thought she was on the Greek island of Rhodes.

Confusion, if not perhaps on this scale, is understandable. The network of low-cost routes around Europe is huge. From Stansted that Friday, Ryanair alone was flying to some 70 different destinations, as far apart as Aarhus in Denmark and Zaragoza in Spain. EasyJet was flying to 25 cities, with a further 25 served from Luton. And although the low-cost revolution began in Britain and Ireland, and is still best-established in these two countries, it has now spread right across the continent.

The new EU members in Central Europe are the latest to catch the bug: they have a favourable combination of low labour costs, interesting new destinations and populations eager to taste the new freedom of travelling west without a visa. Wizz is based in Hungary and Poland; SkyEurope flies from Slovakia and Poland. In Germany Lufthansa now has 12 low-cost competitors on domestic routes. Some newcomers such as Air Polonia and Italy's Volare have gone bust, but other new carriers seem to pop up almost every week. The industry is still expanding rapidly. Low-cost airlines carried 80m passengers in Europe in 2004, up from 47m in 2003. They have over 20% of the European market today and may reach 40% by 2010.

The inspiration for the low-cost revolution came from America, and particularly from the success of Southwest Airlines. The British and Irish were the first to pick up on the trend, in the early 1990s. As Anglophone countries, they are often quicker to copy ideas from the United States; and their relatively flexible labour markets, affluent consumers and island geographies also encouraged low-cost carriers. The surge in British holidaymakers buying houses in France is closely linked to the rise of low-cost airlines. And it is not just travellers who feel the benefits. Entire regional economies have felt the impact. The city of Carcassonne in south-west France reckons that the 235,000 passengers who arrive every year on low-cost airlines have created over €270m ($360m) of extra economic activity.

On the downside

Inevitably, there are grumblers. Many believe that rising oil prices and increasing competition must lead to a big shake-out in the industry. Even Mr O'Leary has warned of an impending “bloodbath”. Some of the prices on offer are so low that one wonders wickedly whether some of the airlines might not have a more profitable sideline: smuggling? piracy? But even if a bloodbath did take place, it seems safe to say that the low-cost habit is now so firmly established in Europe that the days of rip-off airfares will never return.

So much the worse, groan environmentalists, who complain that the spread of low-cost airlines is hugely polluting and a prime contributor to global warming. The European Commission in Brussels is looking into raising “aircraft emissions charges” to take account of their environmental costs. The commission is already unpopular with Mr O'Leary for ruling that Ryanair received illegal state-aid from the local government in Charleroi, its Belgian base. The low-cost airlines are also angry about new EU regulations passed last year that could increase compensation for passengers whose flights are cancelled.

Yet nobody should lose sight of the fact that the Eurocrats and the low-cost carriers are natural allies. The conditions for Europe's airline upheaval were created by EU legislation. Through a succession of liberalisation packages, the commission broke the power of national flag-carriers to monopolise routes between and within European countries. It is EU law that allows a low-cost British upstart such as easyJet to compete with Air France on such lucrative domestic routes as Paris-Toulouse. By allowing newcomers to enter the market, Brussels has achieved that rare thing: an unambiguous triumph both for European consumers and for the ideal of “ever closer union” in Europe. When they have stopped arguing with Mr O'Leary, the Eurocrats might consider putting up a statue to him.

Commentary feature looks at the rise of low cost airlines in Europe, which it claims are bringing Europeans together.

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