Short Haul Long Haul

We spent the weekend down the country with my family and at some stage we were discussing flights to Newfoundland. My girlfriend is from there and we go over at least once a year, she goes twice. The annoying thing about flying from Ireland to Newfoundland is the fact that you need to fly away from your destination to get to it.

For example in the summer we have to fly from Dublin to Toronto, a flight that takes us pretty much over Newfoundland. Worse comes in the winter when we have flown Dublin to London, London to Montreal and Montreal to St John's. On one occasion when the map was put up, close to the end of the flight from London to Montreal, the track showed the plane flying over Dublin and St John's. Basically a flight that could take at a guess 4 hours takes closer to 20 with all the stop overs and waiting in airports.

This led someone over the weekend to ask, what is Ryanairs longest flight and why couldn't they make Shannon and St John's hubs for a service across the Atlantic? Their longest flight is apparently around 3 hours so extending it to 4 hours shouldn't be impossible. Then they might be able to connect into the North American short haul service from St John's and they can already have flights from Shannon which could be extended to the rest of Europe. I'm sure Ryanair would be able to negotiate good terms from Shannon and St John's and these days people might be willing to have a short stop over in St John's or Shannon if they could get their long haul transatlantic flights at short haul prices.